Russian and Ukrainian drone strikes kill at least 5 in each country

Ukrainian drone attacks in the region around Moscow killed five people, local officials said Tuesday, while authorities in Ukraine said Russian aerial strikes there also caused at least five civilian deaths.

Since Russia’s invasion more than four years ago, Ukraine has developed long-range drones that can hit targets deep inside Russia. In the past year, they have battered oil facilities, major storage depots and other key infrastructure.

Russia’s relentless aerial attacks on Ukraine have killed more than 16,000 civilians, with casualties rising steadily each year, according to the United Nations.

Neither side publishes verifiable numbers of troop casualties on the front line, which winds about 1,250 kilometers (800 miles) through eastern and southern Ukraine.

Neither side’s claims could be independently verified.

The death toll from a drone strike Monday in the Russian Black Sea resort of Arkhipo-Osipovka rose to seven, including three children, regional authorities said.

On Tuesday morning, Krasnodar regional authorities updated the number of wounded to 58, with 21 of them hospitalized.

Footage circulating online showed a drone slamming into a crowded beach, with what sounded like rapid gunfire ringing in the background. Ukraine has not commented on the strike.

A Ukrainian drone attack in the Moscow region, which surrounds but doesn’t include the Russian capital, killed five people and wounded 10 others wounded on Tuesday morning, the region’s governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

Most damage from the attack occurred in the Chekhov municipal district, where several fires erupted at the Novoselki industrial zone, Vorobyov said.

In the latest in a string of attacks attack on Russia’s biggest online retailer, Wildberries said Tuesday that its warehouse in the Leningrad region, which lies adjacent to St. Petersburg, was on fire.

In the Tver region, located between Moscow and St. Petersburg, drone debris inflicted “partial” damage on a wall of a Wildberries warehouse in the village of Emmaus, the region’s governor Vitaly Korolyov said.

Overall, the Russian Defense Ministry reported Tuesday morning that its air defenses shot down 320 Ukrainian drones overnight.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that its forces the previous night “continued to strike Ukrainian ports, vessels, and port infrastructure” used by Kyiv’s army.

In the port of Chornomorsk in Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, the Russian military said it struck an automobile components plant and a port terminal, where the Ukrainian forces “were repairing military vehicles and storing ammunition and fuel.”

Meanwhile, a bulk carrier with military cargo was damaged in the southern port of Mykolaiv, while another ship unloading military cargo was hit in Pivdennyi, another Ukrainian Black Sea port, according to the statement.

The ministry also said two bulk carriers taking weapons and military equipment to Ukrainian ports were damaged at sea, south of Odesa.

Russian attacks on Mykolaiv, including its port, killed an 89-year-old woman and wounded seven other people with ages between two and 83, Ukrainian regional officials said.

The Russian strike on civilian infrastructure in southern Odesa region destroyed a private home and wounded two people, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the Odesa regional military administration.

Elsewhere, in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region six Russian glide bombs killed three people, including two girls aged 5 and 10 and an elderly woman, Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy regional military administration, said.

Russian forces also struck Kharkiv and 18 towns and villages across the northern region over the previous 24 hours, killing one person and injuring seven others, including an 8-year-old child, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — Ebola has killed more than 1,700 people in eastern Congo in the fastest-growing outbreak of the disease, data showed.

As of Tuesday, 3,802 cases had been recorded, with 1,707 deaths, according to the latest government update.

It is not clear when the outbreak will reach its peak, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said during his second visit to the town of Bunia near the outbreak’s epicenter on Tuesday. Kaseya cautioned that nearly 80% of new cases are not coming from contact tracing but instead from community spread.

The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, will arrive in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, today and is expected to visit Bunia later this week.

The outbreak, declared on May 15, has been linked to the Bundibugyo virus for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments. Delays in contact tracing, difficulties accessing affected areas, mistrust from communities, and violence by armed groups and some residents have hampered the response, the Africa CDC has said.

Two clinical trials for post-exposure prophylaxis drugs are ongoing in Ituri province as well as two separate vaccine trials in the U.K. and Canada.

The outbreak is mostly concentrated in eastern Congo’s remote Ituri province, which accounts for nearly 90% of cases, but cases have also been confirmed in five other provinces, including in one of the country’s largest cities, Kisangani.

Neighboring Uganda declared itself free of Ebola following the discharge of the country’s last patient in mid-June.

A key challenge is that patient zero has yet to be identified in the outbreak while displacement from armed conflict and illegal mining in the region have made it difficult to trace thousands who have come in contact with infected individuals. The WHO said Tuesday that it was monitoring over 17,000 potential contacts with nearly 80% of them being seen daily.

On Monday, healthcare workers in the hard hit town of Mongbwalu issued an ultimatum over unpaid wages saying that “if nothing is done within 24 hours, we will escalate our action.”

Previously, healthcare workers in Bunia went on strike over a lack of pay and dangerous working conditions. The World Health Organization says more than 100 healthcare workers have been infected since the beginning of the outbreak.

The latest outbreak has killed people at a quicker rate than any previous outbreak, including in 2014-2016 when 28,000 cases were reported, of which over 11,000 people died. That outbreak took about eight months to reach 1,000 deaths.

The response is also hampered by a funding gap, attacks on health centers, an ongoing conflict in eastern Congo and mistrust among local communities.

Enrollment in a highly anticipated study of two possible Ebola treatments recently started in Ituri.