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Russian shelling of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Kharkiv regions caused casualties among civilians and damage to infrastructure, regional officials said on November 29, despite Ukrainian air defenses repelling a large drone attack on several parts of Ukraine.
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Seven civilians were wounded in Donetsk overnight, the acting head of the region, Ihor Moroz, said on November 29. Five residents were wounded in the industrial city of Toretsk and two in Severniy, Moroz said on Telegram.
In the Kharkiv region, Russian shelling caused extensive damage overnight to infrastructure, residential areas, administrative buildings, businesses, and educational facilities, Governor Oleh Synyehubov said. The cities of Kharkiv, Chuhuyiv, and Kupyansk bore the brunt of the Russian bombardment, Synyehubov said. No casualties were immediately reported, he added.
Russia also unleashed a fresh wave of drones on Ukraine overnight, launching 21 Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles and three Kh-59 guided missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement early on November 29.
“All the enemy’s attack drones were destroyed above the Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, and Khmelnytskiy regions. Also, two guided missiles were destroyed in the Mykolaiyv region. A third one did not reach its target,” the air force said. No casualties or damage was immediately reported.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces were engaged in 87 close-quarter battles over the past 24 hours, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Military said in its daily report on November 29.
Heavy fighting continued in Kharkiv and in the Donetsk region, where Russian forces have been incessantly attacking Ukrainian positions in the industrial city of Avdiyivka, which Moscow’s troops have been unsuccessfully trying to encircle for several weeks, at the cost of heavy losses of manpower and equipment.
The military said that Ukrainian marines continue to hold beachheads on the left bank of Dnieper River after landing there earlier this month. The report could not be independently confirmed.
Russian troops one year ago withdrew eastwards from Kherson city in the face of Ukrainian advances, crossing the Dnieper, but continuing to shell the city and its surroundings from the left bank.
On November 19, the Ukrainian military said it had pushed Russian forces some “3 to 8 kilometers” eastwards from the bank of the Dnieper River as its forces secured bridgeheads on the eastern side of the waterway.
Meanwhile, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on November 29 that Russia’s air defenses shot down a Ukrainian drone heading toward the Russian capital, adding that the drone was downed over Podolsk, some 45 kilometers south of Moscow. No damage or casualties were immediately reported at the site where the debris fell, Sobyanin said.
The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed Sobyanin’s announcement, but the information could not be independently verified.
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