Explosions have been heard in the capital, Kyiv and the western city of Lviv, in the early hours of Saturday, local media has reported.
Air raid sirens had been sounding across cities covering the breadth of the country in the pre-dawn hours. Alarms rang out in Kyiv, as well as in Rivne, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Volyn, Khmelnytsky, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy, Donetsk, Odesa, Kharkiv, Poltava and Mykolaiv, according to official Ukrainian Telegram channels.
There has been no official confirmation of the explosions.
More than 900 bodies of Ukrainian civilians have been discovered in the Kyiv region since Russia's withdrawal. Ukrainian officials reported strikes across multiple regions Friday, as an official warned the situation was getting more tense.
And a senior US defense official said Ukrainian missiles hit Russia's flagship in the Black Sea earlier this week -- supporting Ukraine's account.
Almost 2,000 civilians have been killed since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Friday.
In a release, the office said it has documented 1,982 deaths between Feb. 24 and April 14, but it believes the tally is “considerably higher.”
“OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration,” the release said.
Ukraine’s Ministry of the Interior says at least 2,700 civilians had been killed, the UN added.
Fighting continued in industrial areas and the port, and Russia for the first time used the Tu-22М3 long-range bomber to attack the city, said Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
Mariupol has been blockaded by Russian forces since the early days of the invasion, and dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders have held out against a siege that has come at a horrific cost to trapped and starving civilians.
The mayor said this week that the city’s death toll could surpass 20,000. Other Ukrainian officials have said they expect to find evidence in Mariupol of atrocities like the ones discovered in Bucha and other towns outside Kyiv.
Mariupol’s capture would allow Russian forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland and the target of the looming offensive.
It’s not certain when Russia will launch a full-scale campaign.
Also Friday, a Russian rocket hit an airport at night in the central city of Oleksandriia, Mayor Serhiy Kuzmenko said via Facebook. He made no mention of casualties.
And a regional Ukrainian official said seven people were killed and 27 wounded when Russian forces fired on buses carrying civilians in the village of Borovaya, near Kharkiv. The claim could not be independently verified.
Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesman for the regional prosecutor’s office, told the Suspilne news website that authorities had opened criminal proceedings in connection with a suspected “violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with premeditated murder.”
(with inputs from AP)
