AFP, Lviv

Russia fired almost 1,000 drones at Ukraine over the last 24-hours, unleashing one of its largest-ever daytime attacks, killing at least eight people and hitting the UNESCO-protected city centre of Lviv, officials said yesterday.

Two people were killed and a maternity hospital damaged in a drone strike on the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, with another person killed in the central Vinnytsia region -- part of an assault that followed an overnight barrage on residential buildings in several cities that killed another five people.

In Lviv, a western city far from the front, an AFP reporter saw a column of flames rising from a building next to the 17th-century St. Andrew’s Church and Bernardine Monastery in the city centre, which was struck during evening rush hour.

Firefighters were working to put out the blaze at the apartment building, whose roof had been smashed in and windows blown out.

Russia fired 550 drones during the day on Tuesday, following 392 overnight, Ukraine’s air force said in a statement.

Moscow has typically fired its barrages overnight in the four-year war, which started with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The daytime strikes on the centre of Ivano-Frankivsk killed two people and wounded four, including a six-year-old child, regional head Svitlana Onyshchuk said on social media.

Around 10 residential buildings and a maternity hospital were damaged, she said.

In the Vinnytsia region, one person was killed and 11 wounded, the regional head said.

In Lviv, at least 13 people were hospitalised.

The attacks came with Ukraine concerned that it could struggle to repel relentless Russian aerial strikes as its supplies of US air defence systems dwindle amid the war in the Middle East.

“These numbers clearly show that more protection is needed to save lives from Russian strikes,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.

Overnight, Russian missiles and drones rained down on residential areas and transport and energy infrastructure across Ukraine, local authorities said.

Five people were killed and dozens wounded in strikes across the central Poltava region, the eastern city of Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.