airstrike

Sept. 9 (UPI) — At least two dozen people in Ukraine on Tuesday morning were killed in a Russian airstrike, with nearly as many injured at a postal building.

According to local authorities, at least 24 people are dead and 19 others injured in the village of Yarova in the Donetsk Oblast region after Russian forces struck the area around 11 a.m. local time at Ukrposhta, Ukraine’s national post service, as local workers and residents stood in line to receive a pension payout.

“Such Russian strikes must not be left without an appropriate response from the world,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on social media.

Two injured were hospitalized but the full extent of damage was not immediately clear.

Regional Governor Vadim Filashkin called Russia’s air attack “pure terrorism” and said it was “not a military operation,” he wrote on Telegram.

The Ukrainian postal service facility sat less than 6 miles from Russian-occupied territory. Video footage depicted bodies among damaged postal service cars.

The attack represented a higher fatality count bombing since the end of last month when around 23 Ukrainians were killed in overnight air strikes on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

On Tuesday, Zelensky added that the world “must not remain idle” as a result of Russia’s morning airstrikes.

“A response is needed from the United States. A response is needed from Europe. A response is needed from the G20,” he stated.

It came after some 550 Russian drones in July surpassed previous records and penetrated Ukraines air defenses.

Sept. 7 (UPI) — A Russian airstrike hit and damaged the upper floors of the Ukraine Cabinet of Ministers building in Kyiv for the first time since the war began in February 2022.

The building is among the most prominent Ukrainian government buildings and houses the offices of the executive branch’s top officials, including the prime minister and cabinet ministers. The strike is significant because it shows Moscow’s strikes can reach the heart of Kyiv’s government district, hitting a central symbol of executive authority.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement Sunday that the strike on the cabinet building was part of a sweeping attack on cities across the country, including Sumy, Kremenchuk, Odesa, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia.

Russia used more than 800 drones, as well as four ballistic missiles and nine cruise missiles in the attack, making it the largest such strike since the war began, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in its own statement.

At least four people were killed in the broader airstrike, Zelensky said in an earlier statement. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that at least one of the people killed was a child.

“In Kyiv, the rubble is still being cleared — there may still be bodies beneath it. The Cabinet of Ministers building has been damaged. As of now, more than forty people have been reported injured across the country, 20 of them in Kyiv,” Zelensky said.

Yulia Svyrydenko, who has served as prime minister of Ukraine since July 17, shared photos of the destruction on Telegram and said that there were no injuries at the cabinet building during the broader airstrike.

“Russian terror will not stop the work of the government,” she said. “We will restore the destruction. But the lives of Ukrainians cannot be brought back. During the night, four people were killed and more than 44 were injured across the country due to Russian shelling.”

Zelensky said that air raid sirens in the capital alone lasted for more than seven and a half hours, suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin used the strike to test whether the world would tolerate escalating attacks by Moscow as he praised the response of Western allies who decried the airstrike. He also called for sanctions and tariffs on Russia.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the attack as a “brutal overnight assault on Kyiv and across Ukraine,” stressing that “for the first time, the heart of Ukraine’s civilian government was damaged,” and warning that Putin “believes he can act with impunity” and “is not serious about peace.”

French President Emmanuel Macron similarly denounced the strikes on social media, stating that “Russia, meanwhile, is locking itself ever deeper into the logic of war and terror,” and affirmed that “together with Ukraine and our partners, we stand for peace.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that it carried out a large-scale strike with precision weapons and drones against facilities used to produce, store and launch unmanned aircraft, as well as military airbases across central, southern and eastern Ukraine.

The ministry said the attack included strikes on an industrial plant on the western outskirts of Kyiv and a logistics center on the city’s southern edge.

It said all intended targets were destroyed and stressed that no other sites inside Kyiv were hit, making no mention of any government structures in Kyiv.

Separately, Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that Ukraine attempted a large-scale overnight drone attack overnight into Sunday, with its air defenses shooting down 69 unmanned aircraft across southern and central Russia.

The ministry said the drones were intercepted over Krasnodar, Voronezh, Belgorod, Astrakhan, Volgograd, Rostov, Bryansk, Kursk and Ryazan regions, as well as over Crimea and the Sea of Azov.

In its daily summary of war accomplishments, Russia claimed that its troops advanced in eastern and southern Ukraine, capturing the village of Khoroshe in the Dnipropetrovsk region and striking Ukrainian units across Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The ministry claimed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the fighting, along with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and supply depots destroyed.

It said Russian air and missile forces also hit Ukrainian military-industrial sites, drone bases and transport hubs in nearly 150 locations, while air defenses intercepted three U.S.-made HIMARS rockets, guided bombs and more than 200 drones.

July 12 (UPI) — Poland on Saturday scrambled fighter jets in response to Russian military aircraft near its border with Ukraine.

“Attention. Due to the activity of long-range aviation of the Russian Federation, conducting strikes on targets located, among others, in western Ukraine, Polish and allied aviation have begun operations in Polish airspace,” the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces said on X.

“Duty fighter pairs have been scrambled, and ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have reached the highest state of readiness.”

Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least two people and injured more than 20 others overnight, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on X.

The attacks targeted Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Sumy, Lviv and Bukovyna regions and involved 26 cruise missiles and 597 attack drones, Zelensky said in the post.

Ukrainian officials separately reported at least 13 civilian deaths and 46 injuries over the previous 24 hours due to Russian missile strikes.

Poland later canceled its military alert.

“The operation of Polish and allied aviation in our airspace has been concluded due to the cessation of long-range aviation strikes by the Russian Federation on Ukraine,” the country’s armed forces said in a different statement.

“Activated ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have returned to standard operational activities. We thank you for the allied support NATO.”

Zelensky on Friday met with U.S. lawmakers in Rome at the Ukraine Recovery Conference. The Ukrainian president said during the conference he was prioritizing strengthening the country’s air defenses.

BEIRUT — A U.S. envoy said Monday he was satisfied with the Lebanese government’s response to a proposal to disarm the militant Hezbollah group, adding that Washington is ready to help the small nation emerge from its long-running political and economic crisis.

The U.S. envoy to Lebanon, Tom Barrack, spoke to journalists after meeting President Joseph Aoun, saying he will study the government’s seven-page response. Barrack said the American and Lebanese sides are committed “to get a resolution.”

“What the government gave us was something spectacular in a very short period of time and a very complicated manner,” Barrack said during his 20-minute news conference at the presidential palace southeast of Beirut.

His meetings in Lebanon came amid fears that Hezbollah’s refusal to immediately disarm would renew war with Israel after a shaky ceasefire agreement went into effect in November.

Last month, Barrack gave Lebanese officials a proposal that aims to disarm Hezbollah and move on with some economic reforms to try get Lebanon out of its nearly six-year economic crisis, the worst in its modern history. The economic meltdown is rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by Lebanon’s political class.

Barrack said Lebanon should change in the same way Syria has following the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar Assad,who was replaced by a new leadership that is moving ahead with major economic reforms.

Barrack said President Trump and the U.S. are ready to help Lebanon change and “if you don’t want change, it’s no problem. The rest of the region is moving at high speed,” he said.

Hezbollah’s weapons have been one of the principal sticking points since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation. The two sides fought a destructive war in 2006 that ended in a draw.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began a day after the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel and intensified in September, leaving the Iran-backed group badly bruised and much of its political and military leadership dead.

Since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire went into effect in November, Hezbollah has almost ended all its military presence along the border with Israel, which is insisting that the group disarms all over Lebanon. Aoun said Sunday that the number of Lebanese troops along the border with Israel will increase to 10,000, adding that only Lebanese soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers will be armed on the Lebanese side of the border.

On Sunday night, hours before Barrack arrived in Beirut, Israel’s air force carried out strikes on southern and eastern Lebanon, wounding nine people, according to state media. The Israeli army said the airstrikes hit Hezbollah’s infrastructure, arms depots and missile launchers.

Earlier Sunday, Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem reiterated the militant group’s refusal to lay down its weapons before Israel withdraws from all of southern Lebanon and stops its airstrikes.

The Hezbollah-Israel war left over 4,000 people dead in Lebanon and caused destruction estimated at $11 billion. In Israel, 127 people, including 80 soldiers, were killed during the war.

Since the November ceasefire, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on different parts of Lebanon, killing about 250 people and injuring over 600. Israel is also still holding five strategic posts inside Lebanon that it refused to withdraw from earlier this year.

Chehayeb and Mroue write for the Associated Press.

June 17 (UPI) — Israel claimed Tuesday it had killed Iran’s highest-ranking military chief after just days in the job in an airstrike by Israeli warplanes.

“Ali Shadmani, Iran’s senior-most military official and Khamenei’s closest military adviser, was killed in an Israeli Air Force strike in central Tehran, following precise intelligence,” the Israel Defense Forces said.

Shadmani was appointed as the new head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard‘s Emergency Command to replace Gholam Ali Rashid in the hours after Rashid was among five of Iran’s most senior military commanders killed in the initial phase of Israel’s surprise attack early Friday.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces.

The development came as both sides continued to trade deadly attacks into a fifth day — Israel leveraging its stranglehold on Iranian airspace to ramp up its airborne assault on key military and nuclear targets while Iran launched 30 ballistic missiles with blasts reported in northern Israel.

Israel’s health ministry said another 154 people had been injured overnight, with 149 admitted to hospital in a moderate condition or with only minor injuries.

However, Israel said there had been noticeably fewer missiles incoming than on previous days.

Two dozen people in Israel have been killed since Friday, mainly in missile strikes on residential districts in the center and north of the country, while Iran’s Health Ministry says Israel’s attacks have killed 224 people and injured more than 1,200, mostly in Tehran.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One after cutting short his meeting with world leaders at a G7 summit in Canada to head back to Washington, President Donald Trump, in a somewhat cryptic comment, denied an Israel-Iran truce was afoot, saying “we’re looking at better than a cease-fire.”

Before departing Calgary, Trump had told Iranians they needed to evacuate Tehran immediately.

Analysts were trying to figure out whether Trump intends to try to go the diplomatic route and get Tehran to return to the negotiating table to deal on its nuclear development program or double down on his support for Israel.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian issued renewed but vague threats Tuesday, warning Iran “will have to show more painful responses,” unless the United States reined in Israeli aggression and repeated the claim that none of what was occurring could take place without Washington’s involvement.

“If the U.S. government does not prevent the spread of insecurity to the region by bridling that savage [Israeli] regime, Iran will be obliged to give heavier and more painful responses beyond what has occurred so far,” Pezeshkian warned in a call with Omani sultan Haitham bin Tariq.

Oman has been hosting talks on Iran’s nuclear program between top U.S. negotiator Steve Witkoff and Iranian officials that began in April.

Pezeshkian insisted all regime officials, political factions of all persuasions and the people of Iran were willing the armed forces to succeed in their fight against Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, similarly, gave away no indication of wanting to end the conflict any time soon, saying Israeli air power was operating freely while the city of Tehran burned.

“The Israeli Air Force controls the skies over Tehran. We strike regime targets — not civilians. That’s the difference between us and Iran’s terrorist regime that aims to murder women and children,” he said in a post on X.

“I am proud of our security forces and our wonderful people. Together we will win.”

At least two European countries have already begun implementing plans to evacuate their citizens from the region.

A Czech government evacuation flight touched down Tuesday with 66 people on board, according to Defense Minister Jana Cernochova, with another 11 due to be brought out on a Slovakian government flight in the coming hours.

Another flight that landed in Bratislava from Jordan on Monday evening had 14 other Czech citizens aboard.

Poland is sending planes to collect up to 300 of its nationals who have asked to be repatriated from Israel, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Monday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Henryka Moscicka-Dendys said initial evacuations would be via Egypt and Jordan, with a government-chartered aircraft due to depart Sharm el-Sheikh early Wednesday, followed by a military flight out of Amman on Thursday.

Eyewitness video captured an Israeli airstrike hitting west Khan Younis in Gaza as people flee tents amid gunfire. Israel had warned of an “unprecedented attack” and ordered evacuations. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to control all of Gaza, despite global pressure and famine fears.