War in Ukraine: Three Ukrainians killed in drone attacks, two dead on Russian soil after mortar attacks

Russian attacks killed at least three people in Ukraine on Friday, January 3, while Ukrainian shelling killed two people in Russian border regions, local authorities in both countries announced.

On the evening of Friday, January 3, a series of missile strikes hit the city of Chernigiv, in northern Ukraine. “One person killed, 4 injured”, said on Telegram Dmytro Brizhinsky, head of the military administration of the city of Chernigiv, specifying that the toll was provisional.

An AFP journalist on the scene heard three loud detonations in the city in the afternoon. “Today, the enemy launched a triple missile attack on a residential area on the outskirts of Chernigiv”, explained Vyatcheslav Tchauss, the governor of the eponymous region of the affected city, on Telegram.

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93 Russian drones fired

“Search and rescue operations are continuing”, he specified. Early in the morning, another Russian attack, this time by drones, had hit the kyiv region, near the Ukrainian capital.

“One person was killed and four injured in an enemy air attack on the kyiv region”, Mikola Kalashnik, acting governor of the region, had said. The victims were hit by falling debris from drones shot down by air defenses, according to the governor.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force, a total of 93 drones were fired by Russia during the night. Among them, 60 attack drones were shot down, and 26 decoys neutralized.

Two dead on Russian soil

On the same day, a Ukrainian man was killed by a Russian rocket strike, in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia according to its governor, Ivan Fedorov. “A pensioner died, his wife was hospitalized with injuries,” he said on Telegram.

On Russian soil on Friday, in the Kursk region, a man was killed by a Ukrainian attack. In this region, Ukraine seized dozens of border towns as part of a surprise offensive launched last August.

The victim is a 63-year-old worker who was walking outside near his house, according to Alexander Khinchtein, governor of Russia's Kursk region, on Telegram. He said the dead man had been evacuated and suggested he had returned home without permission from local authorities.

In the Bryansk region, another Russian area bordering Ukraine, a Ukrainian mortar attack on the village of Kirillovka killed one person, its governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said. “Ukrainian terrorists fired mortars at the village of Kirillovka. Unfortunately, the terrorist attack claimed the life of a civilian,” he said on Telegram.