Death toll following Russian strike on Ukrainian building rises to 35

The death toll from the weekend Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro has risen to 35, officials said.

Rescuers are continuing to search through the rubble for more victims, regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

About 1,700 people lived in the multi-storey building, with residents saying there were no military facilities at the site.

The reported death toll made it the deadliest attack in one place since a September 30 strike in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project.

Russia’s renewed air attacks came as fierce fighting raged in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, where the Russian military has claimed it has control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar, although Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting.

If the Russian forces win full control of Soledar, it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut. The battle for Bakhmut has raged for months, causing substantial casualties on both sides.

Elsewhere, Russian forces shelled the city of Kherson and the Kherson region, killing three people and wounding 14 others over the last 24 hours, regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said. In the city of Kherson, the shelling damaged a hospital, a child disability centre, a shipyard, critical infrastructure and apartment buildings.

Russian forces also struck the city of Zaporizhzhia, damaging industrial infrastructure and wounding three people, two of them children, the regional administration said.

The Russian and Belarusian air forces launched a joint exercise in Belarus that will run through to February 1, the Belarusian defence ministry said. Russia has sent its warplanes to Belarus for the drills.

Meanwhile, air defences shot down a drone over the bay of the port of Sevastopol in Crimea, Sevastopol chief Mikhail Razvozhayev said.