Russian strikes on a medical center kill 9 people in the Ukrainian city of Sumy

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Two consecutive Russian attacks on a medical center in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Saturday killed at least nine people, officials said.

The first strike killed one person. Russia attacked again while patients and staff were evacuating, said Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.

Local officials in Sumy said Shahed drones were used in the attack. Twenty-one other people were wounded, Sumy Acting Mayor Artem Kobzar said.

Sumy lies some 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have made a surprise incursion since Aug. 6 in a bid to divert the Kremlin’s military focus away from the front line in Ukraine.

In Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, a Russian airstrike on the village of Slatyne on Saturday killed three people and wounded three more, Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.

Syniehubov also said one person was killed in a drone attack in the nearby village of Kozacha Lopan.

Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 69 of 73 Russian drones launched overnight into Saturday as well as two of the four missiles. City authorities in Kyiv said around 15 drones had been shot down over the Ukrainian capital and its outskirts.

In Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, local officials said Saturday that a man’s body was found under the rubble of an administrative building hit by a Russian missile on Friday, bringing the death toll from that attack to four.

In Russia, the Defense Ministry said Saturday that air defenses overnight had shot down four Ukrainian drones over the Belgorod region and one over the Kursk region, both areas bordering Ukraine.

One person was killed in Ukrainian shelling of the Russian border city of Shebekino on Saturday, Belgorod regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Two other people were wounded.

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The Associated Press