Two killed and seven injured in Kyiv’s Antonov aircraft plant attack

At least two people died and seven were injured on Monday after Russian forces shelled at the Antonov aircraft plant in Kyiv on Monday, said the city administration. Another person was killed after a residential building was fired upon.

Tweeting about the attack, the Ukrainian parliament said that about 70 people were evacuated.

The Kyiv city government says a large fire broke out after the strike on the factory, while one person died and three were injured when the residential building was hit.

The videos circulating on social media shows the plant on fire apparently from the Russian attack and heavy smoke rising up in the sky.

The Antonov aircraft plant, located at the Sviatoshyn Airfield in Kyiv, between the districts of Nyvky, Svyatoshyn and Bilychi, is Ukraine’s largest and is best known for producing many of the world’s largest-ever cargo planes.

Escalating the offensive, Russian artillery had also hit a nine-story apartment building in a northern district of the city on Monday morning, thereby, destroying apartments on several floors and igniting a fire. There are, however, no immediate reports of casualties, said the emergency agency.

A town councillor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was also killed in fighting and shells fell on the towns of Irpen, Bucha and Hostomel, said region administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba on Ukrainian television.

However, troops have not made any major advances in the past 24 hours, according to the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces,

Meanwhile, Ukraine would be evacuating civilians in the country through ten “humanitarian corridors”, including from towns near Kyiv, and in the eastern region of Luhansk, announced deputy prime minister Iryna Verschuk on Monday.

“We will, once again, try to unblock the movement of the humanitarian convoy carrying food and medicine to (the port city of Mariupol) from Berdiansk (in southeastern Ukraine),” she said.

The diplomatic talks between the two countries are likely to enter the fourth round on Monday, with the officials discussing getting aid to the cities and towns under fire, said Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak.

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Additional reporting from the wires