Russia-Ukraine war: Missile attack by Russian troops destroy Vasylkiv military airbase near Kyiv

Russian rockets attacked and destroyed a Ukrainian military airbase near the town of Vasylkiv near the capital Kyiv region on Saturday morning, Interfax Ukraine quoted the local mayor as saying.

The rocket attacks also hit an ammunition depot, Vasylkiv Mayor Natalia Balasynovych said.

The enemy forces also destroyed a local oil depot while the fire broke out at an ammunition depot, reported The Kyiv Independent.

"The Russian forces destroyed Vasylkiv military airfield in Vasylkiv city of Kyiv Oblast in Ukraine by dropping eight missiles," she said.

Hospitals came under fire overnight in the port city of Mykolaiv in the south of Ukraine, including a cancer treatment centre and an eye clinic, an AFP reporter said Saturday.

The windows were blown out of the cancer treatment centre, where patients were undergoing chemotherapy and the doors damaged.

"They shot at the civilian areas, without any military objective," AFP reported saying hospital’s head Dmytro Lagochev.

"There’s a hospital here, an orphanage and an ophthalmological clinic," he said.

Meanwhile, a mosque in the southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, where 80 civilians were taking shelter was shelled by Russian forces, Ukraine's foreign ministry said on Saturday.

"The mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roxolana (Hurrem Sultan) in Mariupol was shelled by Russian invaders. More than 80 adults and children are hiding there from the shelling, including citizens of Turkey," Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote on its Twitter account.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a televised address on Saturday had said that the war had reached a “strategic turning point” as air raid sirens blared across most Ukrainian cities urging people to seek shelters.

(with source inputs)