A girl, her mother and another woman were killed during a Russian missile strike on Kyiv after the air raid shelter they rushed to failed to open, witnesses said.
Ukraine's air force said air defences shot down all 10 ballistic and Iskander cruise missiles fired by Russia in the 18th attack on the capital since the start of May.
But Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said three school buildings, a kindergarten, six residential buildings and a police station were damaged. He did not say what the main targets of the attack were but the energy ministry said no energy facilities were hit.
Police said three people were killed on Thursday including a nine-year-old girl and her mother, and opened a criminal investigation into events near a medical clinic in the Desnyanskyi district. City officials had earlier said the girl was 11.
"Three people, one of them a child, died near the clinic last night," Klitschko said. "A rocket fragment fell near the entrance to the clinic four minutes after the air alert was announced. And people headed for the shelter."
Local residents said people were unable to enter the shelter because it was closed.
"The air alert sounded. My wife took our daughter and they ran to the entrance here," local resident Yaroslav Ryabchuk told Reuters in the Desnyanskyi district.
"The entrance was closed, there were already maybe five to 10 women with children. No one opened up for them. They knocked loudly enough."
"They tried to enter the shelter, no one opened up for them. My wife died."
Russia has denied targeting civilians or committing war crimes but its forces have caused devastation in Ukrainian cities and repeatedly hit residential areas since its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
Russia has intensified missile and drone attacks on the Ukrainian capital as Kyiv prepares to launch a counteroffensive. Russia says Ukrainian shelling of border areas has increased in recent weeks as Kyiv prepares its counterattack.
Meanwhile, Russia's most powerful mercenary, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said his Wagner group would fight on in Ukraine if his men got a separate section of the front without having to depend on "clowns" who ran swathes of the Russian armed forces.
Celebrating his 62nd birthday on Thursday at a training camp, Prigozhin also confirmed that his men would finally leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on June 5 after handing it to the Russian army. The Wagner mercenaries captured the devastated city in late May after months of grinding warfare.
"If the whole chain (of command) is 100 per cent failed and will only be led by clowns who turn people into meat, then we will not participate in it," said Prigozhin, known for his blunt, often expletive-laced commentary on the conduct of the war.
"Beautiful isn't it?" he said to Russian reporters with a smile, gazing at a night sky lit up with blasts and red flares against bursts of automatic gunfire from his mercenaries.
He then engaged in a detailed description of the prosthetic legs which his wounded men have received, including those who continued to fight.
Prigozhin said his men wanted to rest at camps in Russian-controlled Ukraine for around a month and then things would become clearer.
"It has been a tough year. Then we'll see how it goes," he said.
The restaurateur-turned-mercenary has gained widespread notoriety during the 15-month war in Ukraine, and has regularly insulted President Vladimir Putin's top military brass, especially Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, over their performance.
Neither Shoigu or Gerasimov have responded to his insults in public.
Prigozhin, who quipped last week that his nickname should be "Putin's butcher" rather than "Putin's chef", said on Wednesday he had asked prosecutors to investigate whether senior Russian defence officials had committed any "crime" before or during the war in Ukraine.
