KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces fired cruise missiles at the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa overnight, killing at least three people and injuring more than a dozen others in a strike that damaged homes, a warehouse, shops and cafes downtown, the regional state administration said Wednesday.

The attack launched from the Black Sea involved four Kalibr cruise missiles, three of which were intercepted by air defenses, the regional administration said on Facebook.

Three employees of a food warehouse were killed and seven others injured, and searchers were looking for possible survivors under the rubble, it said. Another six people — guards and residents of a neighboring house — were injured.

Andriy Kovalov, a spokesperson for Ukraine's General Staff, said Russian forces have increased missile and aerial strikes on Ukraine. It comes as Kyiv moves forward with the early stages of a counteroffensive against Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine more than 15 months ago.

In a briefing, he said strikes on the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kirovohrad regions, in addition to the Odesa region, involved Kh-22 cruise missiles, sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles, and Iranian-made Shahed drones. Nine were intercepted.

Kovalov said Ukrainian forces made advances on several fronts of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, and fighting was continuing in or near at least two settlements in the eastern Donetsk region. Russia has occupied and controls nearly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense, which has regularly issued updates on the conflict, wrote on Twitter that southern Ukraine “has often been more permissible for Russian air operations” compared with other parts of the front.

Separately, the mayor of the central city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's hometown, said the death toll from a Russian strike a day earlier that hit an apartment building had risen to 12.

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