Russia unleashed one of its heaviest missile-and-drone barrages on Kyiv in weeks overnight into Thursday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 33 more as ballistic missiles tore into residential buildings, a medical facility and a school across the Ukrainian capital, officials said.

The attack struck roughly a dozen locations spanning Kyiv's Darnytskyi, Sviatoshynskyi and Solomianskyi districts, according to ABC News wire reporting. In Solomianskyi, the top two floors of a nine-story apartment block were obliterated, with emergency crews digging through rubble to free people trapped inside the building and in a nearby school shelter. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said seven of the dead were killed in that district alone.

On the capital's outskirts, Kyiv regional governor Tymur Tkachenko reported a separate strike on Brovary killed one person and wounded another, damaging an industrial facility that caught fire. "All relevant services are on site, working to extinguish the fire," Tkachenko said, according to Euronews.

Screams in the dark

Residents described the strikes tearing through their homes with little warning as an air raid alert stretched into the early morning hours. Survivor Larysa Bondaruk told reporters at the scene:

"A rocket hit the roof. It was incredibly loud, immediately, debris and doors were blown out. There were columns of smoke, columns of fire, screams, crying and despair."

Russia's defense ministry claimed the barrage targeted "military facilities" and transport and logistics infrastructure with high-precision weapons, while Moscow said its own air defenses intercepted roughly 250 Ukrainian drones aimed at the Russian capital region overnight, according to CNN. Ukrainian officials rejected the military-target framing, noting the strikes hit apartment blocks, a children's hospital and a school.

The assault is the latest in a string of large-scale barrages on Kyiv this month, part of what analysts describe as a Russian strategy of firing waves of ballistic missiles — which Ukraine's Patriot batteries struggle to intercept in sufficient numbers — to exhaust the capital's dwindling air-defense stockpiles. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly appealed to Western allies for more interceptors and tougher sanctions on Moscow's missile supply chain as the death tolls from these strikes continue to mount.

Rescue operations were ongoing as of early Thursday, with the casualty count expected to rise as crews clear the rubble in Solomianskyi.