by Iryna and Nazartchuk
ODESSA, Ukraine (Reuters) – Russia launched a major air attack late on Sunday against Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa, injuring at least eight people and causing damage to trucks loaded with grain and one of the city’s main art galleries, Ukrainian officials said.
Around twenty multi-storey buildings and around twenty cars were damaged during the attack, the Interior Ministry said.
Air defenses downed 15 of 22 Iranian-made “Shahed” drones and an X-59 missile, the air force said.
According to Odessa Governor Oleh Kiper, 15 of the drones sent by Russia targeted the city’s port infrastructure. Warehouses and specialized vehicles were also damaged, and trucks carrying grain caught fire before the fires were quickly extinguished, he said.
Russia has intensified its bombing of Ukrainian ports, including Odessa, and the country’s grain infrastructure since July and the end of the Black Sea grain deal.
The strike also caused significant damage to the Odessa Museum of Fine Arts, located in one of the oldest Tsarist-era palaces in the heart of the city.
The museum, which celebrates its 124th anniversary on Monday, housed some 10,000 works of art before the war, including paintings by some of the best-known Russian and Ukrainian artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
(Written by Olena Harmash and Lidia Kelly, Blandine Hénault for the French version, edited by Kate Entringer)
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