Four people killed, 40 injured in Russian strike on Ukraine’s Dnipro, Kyiv says

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DNIPRO, Ukraine, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Four people were killed and 40 wounded in a Russian missile attack on the eastern-central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Monday, Ukrainian officials said.

The attack came amid an intensified diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visiting Paris on Monday, a day after his team held talks with U.S. officials.

Vladyslav Haivanenko, the acting governor of the surrounding Dnipropetrovsk region, said on the Telegram messaging app that 11 of those injured in the strike were in a serious condition. He said the search and rescue operation had been completed.

Ukraine’s emergency services said car service stations, other businesses, an office building and 49 cars were all damaged in the attack.

Vitalii Kovalenko was working in his car repair shop when the missile hit.

“Everyone fell to the floor, then we started to figure out where the employees were. I ran upstairs and saw that one guy was fine, but he was a bit covered in shrapnel,” he said, adding that luckily all his employees were alive.

Pictures posted on Telegram showed firefighters working at the site of the strike and emergency services workers evacuating people on stretchers as well as a body in a black bag.

The industrial city of Dnipro and the surrounding region have faced repeated Russian missile and drone attacks that have killed civilians and damaged housing, industry and infrastructure.

There was no immediate comment from Russia on the attack.

(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka, Mykhailo Moskalenko, writing by Anna Pruchnicka, Editing by Gareth Jones)