KYIV (Reuters) – A Russian drone attack early on Wednesday damaged port infrastructure in the Izmail district of southern Ukraine, an important grain exporting hub, Ukrainian officials said.
The attack on Izmail, which is in the Odesa region, was carried out in several waves, regional governor Oleh Kiper said.
“Unfortunately, there were hits: damage to port and other civil infrastructure was recorded,” he said on the Telegram messaging app, without giving details of the damage.
The Ukrainian military later said the four-and-a-half hour attack had caused a fire at a truck parking lot. The prosecutor general’s office said six truck drivers and one local resident had been hurt.
Referring to two ports on the Danube River that are used to export grain, Kiper said the six civilians were injured in Reni and one in Izmail.
Photos posted by the prosecutors on Telegram showed trucks on fire and a partially destroyed building.
The Ukrainian air force said 32 of the 44 Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia launched into Ukraine overnight had been destroyed.
“The main target was the southern parts of the Odesa region – the region’s port infrastructure,” it said.
Moscow has intensified attacks on Ukrainian port and grain infrastructure since mid-July, when it quit a U.N.-brokered deal that enabled safe passage of Ukrainian grain shipments via the Black Sea.
Separately, the military administration in Sumy said three drones had been shot down over the northern region overnight.
The full scale of the attack on Wednesday was not immediately clear. Reuters could not independently verify the report. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; additional reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Timothy Heritage)
