Ukrainian service personnel use searchlights as they search for drones in the sky over the city centre during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine September 7, 2024. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine's air force said on Saturday Russia launched a total of 67 long-range Shahed drones in a mass overnight attack, 58 of which it was able to shoot down.
The air force said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that air defence units were scrambled into action in 11 regions across Ukraine.
Drone debris was found next to the parliament building in the capital Kyiv, the legislature said in a separate statement it posted on its official Telegram page along with several photographs.
It is rare for a Russian missile or drone to get so far into central Kyiv, as the city is protected by a network of Soviet-era and Western-donated air defence systems.
The hilltop government quarter in the city centre is perhaps the best-defended site in Ukraine, as it also houses the offices of the president, cabinet and the central bank.
The pictures on Telegram showed at least four pieces of debris scattered on the ground near the parliament building. One piece lay at the foot of the steps to the building's main entrance, while another hunk of metal looked riddled with shrapnel.
Reuters correspondents in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, heard a series of explosions shortly after 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Saturday, some of which resounded loudly around the city centre, waking up its residents.
Since the start of its invasion in February 2022, Moscow has launched thousands of missiles and Shahed drones into Ukraine.
The Iranian-designed drone has been used by Russia since September 2022 as a cheap, more expendable alternative to missiles, which are expensive and harder to manufacture.
The propeller-powered Shahed flies at less than 200 km per hour (125 miles per hour) but can be tricky for conventional air defence systems to track because it flies low and emits far less heat than a missile.
Kyiv's air force said the drones were launched from two border regions in Russia as well as from the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
