At least 16 killed and over 100 wounded in Russian ‘double-tap’ strike on a Ukrainian shopping center

At least 16 people have been killed and 130 more, including 23 children, wounded in a Russian “double-tap” strike on a shopping center in, Kryvyi Rih, central Ukraine, authorities say.

Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and has been targeted multiple times during the four-year-war.

Ukraine is facing a critical shortages US-made Patriot air defense interceptors, the only system capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.

“The attack drones struck in two waves: half an hour after the first strike and the resulting fire, there was a second strike targeting emergency responders,” Zelensky posted on Telegram.

He warned that Ukraine “will definitely respond” to the attack.

Emergency crews are still working to clear the rubble. Several people are missing and can’t be reached, Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s defense council, said.

Footage geolocated by CNN shows a drone hitting a shopping center in Kryvyi Rih, causing a fireball to erupt into the sky as it explodes, all while smoke from an apparent earlier strike is still visible.

Smoke filled the inside of the shopping center as people hurriedly tried to leave, videos filmed at the scene show. Stores inside the shopping center caught fire, Vilkul added.

Among the wounded, at least 29 of the injured are in serious condition, Vilkul said, including a 14-year-old girl with a traumatic brain injury and four other children.

Russia continued its attacks across Ukraine over the past 24 hours, with strikes reported in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Sumy, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Odesa. At least nine people have been killed and a further 49 injured.

Ukrainian forces struck two targets in Russia’s Samara Oblast region overnight – the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery and an Ozon logistics hub, which is a competitor to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries, a frequent target in recent weeks as Kyiv brings the war to Russian soil.

Russia has intensified its aerial assault on Ukraine in recent months as the front lines remain largely static, locked in a slow-moving, deadly stalemate, and Ukraine’s air defenses come under strain.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha again urged allies to provide more missile interceptors and impose additional sanctions on Russia’s military-industrial complex.

“Russia must be denied both the ability to produce these means of terror and the ability to use them,” he said.

The strike on the mall happened a day after Russia carried out a large attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region, killing at least 17 people, according to Ukraine.

CNN’s Michael Rios, Victoria Butenko and Daria Tarasova-Markina contributed to this report.