At least 10 people were killed in a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, its mayor said on Tuesday.
"As of 1300 (1000 GMT) 10 people have been killed," Oleksandr Vilkul said in a Telegram post, adding that another person was under the rubble and a further 28 were injured.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky strongly condemned the overnight attack on his home city.
“Russian killers continue their war against residential buildings, ordinary cities and people,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Rescue operations were underway in a burning five-storey apartment building and in a destroyed warehouse, said Serhiy Lysak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region where Kryvyi Rih is located.
“There are still people under the rubble of a building. There was a fire there,” he added early on Tuesday morning, posting a photograph of the apartment block with smoke pouring out of some of the blown out windows.
City mayor Oleksandr Vilkul said at least seven people were believed to be trapped under the rubble.
Mr Zelensky on Tuesday also said “battles are fierce, but we are moving forward” after his military chiefs said seven villages had been recaptured in the summer counter-offensive.
Fighting has been taken place in a series of locations on the frontline in the eastern Donetsk province and more southern Zaporizhzhia province.
In his overnight address after meeting defence chiefs, Mr Zelensky said: “The key reports were from the commanders of the operational directions that are the most important and hottest - Khortytsia and Tavria.
“The battles are fierce, but we are moving forward, and this is very important. The enemy’s losses are exactly what we need.”
But he added that “unfavourable” weather conditions had hampered advances in the long-awaited counter-offensive.
He explained further: “Generals Syrskyi and Tarnavskyi reported..on the successes we have already achieved, on the points of the front where we need reinforcement, and on the actions that can break more Russian positions.
“Thank you to our guys for every Ukrainian flag that is now returning to its rightful place in the villages of the newly de-occupied territory!”
Kyiv says seven villages have been recaptured in the country’s south east, including Storozheve in the Donetsk area, as well as the settlements of Blahodatne, Neskuchne, Makarivka as Vladimir Putin’s troops have been pushed back.
Ukrainian forces have also gained territory around the eastern town of Bakhmut, but other attacks have been less successful, with reports of losses of equipment and casualties in some places.
Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said the country's troops recaptured a total of seven villages spanning 90 square kilometres (35 square miles) over the past week - small successes in the early phases of a counter-offensive.
Russian officials did not confirm those Ukrainian gains, which were impossible to verify and could be reversed in the to-and-fro of war.
The Institute for the Study of War said: “Ukrainian forces continued counter-offensive operations in at least three sectors of the front and made territorial gains on June 12.”
But the Washington-based think tank also highlighted reports of Russian counter-attacks.
During the early hours of Tuesday, air raid sirens blared across the whole of Ukraine, with Kyiv’s military officials saying air defence forces destroyed all Russian missiles targeting the Ukrainian capital.
Ukraine’s top military command said that air forces destroyed 10 out of 14 cruise missiles Russia launched on Ukraine and one of the four Iranian-made drones.
It was not immediately clear how many missiles hit Kryvyi Rih and where the Russia-launched drones struck their targets.
There was no immediate comment from Russia about the reported strikes.
The mayor of the city of Kharkiv in Ukraine’s east said on his Telegram channel that Russian drones hit civilian infrastructure there, striking a warehouse and a utility firm’s building. There was no immediate information about casualties.
