Kyiv attacks kill three in Russia, Ukraine maternity ward hit

Ukrainian drone and shelling attacks killed three people in Russia on Friday, while Russian bombardments on eastern Ukraine forced the evacuation of a maternity centre in Kharkiv and wounded nine.

Russian air defence systems intercepted 155 Ukrainian drones overnight, Moscow said, an attack that comes after Russia pounded Ukraine in successive nightly attacks targeting the capital Kyiv.

There was one dead in Russia's Lipetsk region, and another was killed in the western Tula region from the drone attacks, local officials said. Ukrainian shelling later killed another civilian in the border region of Belgorod, the governor announced.

Both Kyiv and Moscow have stepped up their aerial strikes over recent months as the Kremlin rejects calls to halt its three-year invasion.

The Kremlin on Friday restated its opposition to a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine, a day after French President Emmanuel Macron said Kyiv's allies had a "plan that is ready to go and initiate in the hours after a ceasefire."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Moscow would not accept any European troops "near our border".

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Rome this week drumming up support from allies, said a medical facility was hit in the overnight attack on Kharkiv, his country's second-largest city.

"Among the wounded are women in a maternity hospital -- mothers with newborns, women recovering from surgery," he wrote on social media.

"Fortunately, no children were injured. Russia is targeting life itself -- even in the very places where it begins," he added, noting several other regions were attacked overnight.

An AFP reporter in the city saw a woman cradling her newborn in an ambulance after being evacuated.

The southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa was struck later in the morning, wounding eight people, local officials said.

Over the past week, Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with the largest drone and missile barrages since it launched its invasion in February 2022.

The UN has said Russia's intensifying attacks pushed the number of Ukrainian civilians killed and wounded to a three-year high in the month of June.

The Ukrainian military said its drone attacks had targeted an aircraft factory near Moscow and a missile manufacturing plant.

Separately, a source in Ukraine's military intelligence said it was behind a gas pipeline blast that disrupted supplies to military facilities.

Local media in Russia's Tyumen region reported that residents of the town of Langepas had heard blasts on the night of July 10.

Russian forces have also been advancing across the front line that cuts hundreds of kilometres (miles) through eastern and southern Ukraine.

Moscow said Friday its forces had captured another village in the eastern Donetsk region, that the Kremlin claimed to have annexed along with three other regions in late 2022.