An overnight Russian drone attack on Ukraine's southern city of Odesa has wounded at least 10 people, including two children, and inflicted severe structural damage across several residential neighbourhoods, Ukrainian officials confirmed on Monday morning.
According to preliminary reports from emergency services, the drones, believed to be Iranian-designed Shahed loitering munitions, frequently utilised by Russian forces for their ability to swarm and overwhelm air defences,struck multiple civilian targets across the historic Black Sea port.
Lysak said several high-rise residential buildings suffered direct hits or severe blast damage from intercepted drone debris, blowing out windows and igniting secondary fires. A local hotel was also struck, alongside various other commercial and public facilities in the centre of the city.
The human toll was concentrated in this central hub. "Most of the injured people were located there," Lysak stated, confirming that emergency medical teams had treated 10 individuals for various trauma injuries, shrapnel wounds, and smoke inhalation.
City under constant siege
The assault was not confined solely to the city centre. "It was an extremely difficult night," Lysak added. He noted that beyond the Prymorskyi district, private homes, multi-story residential blocks, and civilian vehicles came under sustained attack in at least two other distinct districts of the sprawling municipality.
He said that fire brigades worked tirelessly through the night to extinguish blazes sparked by the drone impacts, preventing the fires from spreading through densely packed residential blocks.
As Ukraine's major Black Sea port, Odesa serves as the focal point for the nation's vital agricultural and industrial exports. The ability of Ukraine to ship grain and raw materials to international markets hinges almost entirely on the operational security of Odesa's maritime infrastructure. Consequently, the city has been repeatedly and ruthlessly targeted by Russian missile and drone attacks over the course of more than four years of continuous war, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Elsewhere, an employee of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, controlled by Russian forces, was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack, the Russian-installed management of the station said in a Telegram post on Monday.
"A driver was killed today when a Ukrainian Armed Forces drone struck the transport department at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant," the post said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its team on the site will look into the incident and continue to monitor the situation.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi reiterated that strikes on or near nuclear power plants "can endanger nuclear safety and must not take place," the Vienna-based agency cited him as saying in a post on social media platform X.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Monday that its forces had taken control of the villages of Illichivka and Taratutyne in eastern Ukraine, the state-run RIA news agency reported.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield report.
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