Russian drones and missiles struck at least three Ukrainian cities overnight on 29 April, damaging two hospitals and killing a 60-year-old woman in Shostka who suffocated on smoke as her apartment building burned. Two civilians were wounded in Izmail when a drone destroyed the reception ward of the city's district hospital. Three districts of Kharkiv were hit the same night.
Hospitals are protected sites under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Russia has damaged or destroyed more than 2,300 Ukrainian medical facilities since February 2022, according to the health ministry.
The Odesa regional prosecutor's office opened criminal proceedings on suspicion of war crimes after the Izmail strike, citing Article 438 of Ukraine's Criminal Code. Medical facilities are protected under Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Izmail: drone destroys hospital reception ward
The drone strike on Izmail's district hospital completely destroyed its reception ward and significantly damaged the therapy, cardiology and surgery departments, along with the ultrasound and X-ray rooms, the Odesa Oblast military administration said. Medical staff and patients had taken shelter before the strike. The patients have since been transferred to other wards.
Two residents of the area around the hospital were wounded — a 47-year-old man and a 56-year-old woman. The woman was hospitalized with multiple shrapnel injuries; doctors describe her condition as serious, Odesa Oblast head Oleh Kiper said.
The drones targeted port and civilian infrastructure across Odesa Oblast as well as residential housing, the regional prosecutor's office said. Six private homes were partly destroyed. Falling debris ignited reeds in the Danube Biosphere Reserve. Twelve explosions were heard across Izmail during the air raid alert, which lasted close to two hours.
Shostka: woman dies as building burns
The Shostka strikes hit three separate locations across the town. Apartment blocks caught fire. Emergency workers pulled one resident from a burning building and evacuated 16 more, the State Emergency Service reported. Two other residents sought medical help.
The woman who died lived in one of the apartment blocks hit. She did not burn. The smoke reached her first.
A medical facility, a multi-story residential building and other infrastructure were destroyed in the Shostka community, community head Mykola Noha said. Six houses sustained damage, along with several vehicles.
The Sumy Oblast administration described the strikes as deliberate. "The enemy targeted houses where civilians live," the administration stated on Telegram.
Three Kharkiv districts hit in single night
In Osnovyanskyi district, drones set fire to a hypermarket parking lot. Windows shattered at the store, and a car and two buses sustained damage, Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov reported.
In Slobidskyi district, a separate strike blew out windows in nearby apartment buildings, Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote.
In Nemyshlianskyi district, a drone hit a tree, the explosion damaging around 10 private houses, Terekhov also reported. One person sought medical help. The previous evening, another Russian drone had struck a road in the same district.
A nightly pattern
Russia now launches Shahed-type drones across Ukraine in batches every night. The cities hit on 29 April lie hundreds of kilometers apart but share the same experience of routine targeting. Izmail, on the Danube near the Romanian border, has come under sustained drone attack since 2023, when Russia withdrew from the Black Sea grain initiative and shifted its targeting to Ukraine's river ports. Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, has been a primary target since February 2022. Shostka, an industrial town in northern Sumy Oblast, sits within easy range of the Russian border.
In Izmail, the reception ward where the wounded would have been triaged was destroyed first. In Shostka, sixteen people made it out of the apartment building. The 60-year-old woman did not.
