Russian strikes on Ukraine kill 2 foreign aid workers and target Kyiv

KYIV, Ukraine — Two foreign aid workers were reportedly killed in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Russian shelling hit a van carrying a team of four working with a Ukrainian NGO, while dozens of Russian drones targeted Kyiv and wounded at least one civilian.

The four volunteers from the Road to Relief NGO, which helps evacuate wounded people from front-line areas, were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the town of Chasiv Yar, the organization said on its Instagram page.

Road to Relief said Canadian Anthony Ihnat died in the attack, while German medical volunteer Ruben Mawick and Swedish volunteer Johan Mathias Thyr were seriously injured.

Road to Relief added that it could not trace the whereabouts of the van’s fourth passenger, Emma Igual, a Spanish national who was the organization’s director. Hours later, Spain’s Acting Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told Spanish media that authorities in Madrid had received “verbal confirmation” of the 32-year-old Igual’s death.

The volunteers were on their way to assess the needs of civilians on the outskirts of Bakhmut, Road to Relief said, in reference to the eastern town that saw the war’s longest and bloodiest battle before falling to Moscow in May. Ukrainian forces have held on to Bakhmut’s western suburbs and are pushing a counteroffensive in the area.

Also on Sunday, Ukraine’s air force said it had brought down 26 out of 33 drones launched by Russia at the Ukrainian capital in the early hours. The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhii Popko, said that debris from Iranian-made Shahed drones fell in several districts of the city and wounded at least one civilian. Popko said there was no risk to the person’s life, and added that most of the wreckage fell in open ground, although one high-rise apartment was damaged.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko later said that one civilian was wounded in the city’s historic center and received help on the spot.

The governor of the Kyiv region, which surrounds but does not include the capital, also reported that the drone strike damaged an unspecified infrastructure facility there. Ruslan Kravchenko added that private houses, a school, a kindergarten and local administration buildings were damaged elsewhere in the province.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in the early hours of Sunday that Moscow’s forces earlier destroyed three U.S.-supplied Ukrainian speedboats that had been traveling toward Crimea. The claim could not be independently verified.

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Associated Press writer Aritz Parra in Madrid contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine