Eight killed in overnight Russian strikes, as Ukraine downs bomber

This handout photograph taken and released by State Emergency Service of Ukraine on April 2, 2024, shows firefighters working to extinguishing a fire that authorities said has been damaged during a missile strike, in the eastern city of Dnipro

Russian strikes on Ukraine in the early hours of Friday killed at least eight people, including two children, as Kiev said it shot down a Russian strategic bomber for the first time.

Moscow said a military plane had crashed over the south of the country while returning to base from a combat mission after suffering a technical malfunction.

The downing of a Russian bomber used to fire cruise missiles at Ukraine would be a highly symbolic win for Kiev, which has been pounded by hundreds of overnight Russian aerial strikes since Moscow invaded more than two years ago.

The latest overnight Russian strikes on the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region killed at least eight people and injured more than a dozen, officials said.

The head of the region Sergiy Lysak said medics had been able to save a six-year-old boy earlier reported killed, revising down an earlier toll of nine killed.

Strikes hit the region's Synelnykivsky area, where at least two children — aged six and eight — were among those killed, and the regional capital of Dnipro, the interior ministry said.

Interior Minister Igor Klymenko published photos showing emergency workers carrying injured people away on stretchers.

  Life-saving air defence 

Ukraine's railway operator said train facilities were targeted in the attack and that seven employees were among those wounded. A female member of staff — survived by two teenage children — was killed, they added.

President Volodymyr Zelensky...