Il Nuovo Postiglione - Russian drone barrage kills three elderly couples in east Ukraine

Moscow has pummelled Ukrainian cities with dozens of drones or missiles almost daily since it invaded in early 2022.

Images distributed by emergency services showed a gaping hole in the side of the building and rescue workers digging through debris for survivors.

"This is a terrible tragedy, a terrible Russian crime. It is very important that the world does not pause in putting pressure on Russia for this terror," President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.

Ukrainian prosecutors said the barrage killed three couples -- six men and women between the ages of 61 and 74.

Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets had earlier said a child was among the wounded.

Sumy lies just over the border from Russia in northeastern Ukraine and has been targeted regularly in Russian aerial attacks. Around 255,000 people lived there before the war.

The Ukrainian air force said Moscow had attacked with 81 drones, including the Iranian-designed Shahed type.

Ukraine's air defence units downed 37 of the drones in various regions, including in Sumy and near the capital Kyiv.

In the southern Odesa region on the Black Sea, officials said Russian drones targeted the port town of Izmail, one of several important Ukrainian export hubs.

Zelensky's chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Thursday that Russia was now launching Shahed drones charged with shrapnel "to increase the number of civilian casualties".

Separate Russian attacks killed one person and wounded 12 more, including two children, in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin said it annexed in late 2022.

M.Costa--INP