The Kryvyi Rih mall attack deaths toll has reached 16, Ukrainian officials confirmed, as Russian strikes elsewhere in the country killed at least two further people and left nine still missing from the rubble of the Soniachna Halereia shopping centre.
Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said early on Saturday that a sixteenth body had been retrieved from the wreckage of the mall, which was hit on Friday afternoon in what President Volodymyr Zelensky described as a double-tap drone attack carried out in ‘two waves’. Hanzha said on Telegram that nine people, including two children, remained unaccounted for.
According to Reuters Connect, a total of 130 civilians were injured in the strike on the Soniachna Halereia, among them 25 children. Of those, Hanzha had earlier confirmed 29 were in a serious condition. Rescue teams from four other Ukrainian regions were urgently deployed to assist the search-and-rescue operation.
Double-tap strike on Kryvyi Rih mall attack site
The Kryvyi Rih mall attack unfolded during daylight hours in the home city of President Zelensky. He called it ‘absolutely cynical and despicable’, saying the second wave of drones deliberately targeted emergency workers who had responded to the first strike. Dramatic footage verified by the BBC showed a drone hitting the already burning shopping centre in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia’s military did not comment on the strike.
Kryvyi Rih Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul said the Russian drones were flying at ‘extremely low altitudes’, and described those responsible as ‘animals’. ‘There are missing people who are not responding to calls,’ Vilkul added. More people were also reported to be trapped in the rubble.
Wider strikes on Saturday morning
Overnight and into Saturday, Russian forces carried out further strikes across Ukraine. In Kyiv, a fire broke out in a warehouse in the capital’s Darnytskyi district. The city’s military administration said on Telegram: ‘According to preliminary information, unfortunately, there is one person dead and several injured.’
In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, Ivan Fedorov, head of the regional military administration, said a Russian drone strike killed at least one man and injured four people in the early hours of Saturday.
The Russian defence ministry said it had launched what it described as massive strikes targeting transport infrastructure and warehouses across Ukraine. On Friday, four people, including three children, were killed in separate Russian attacks in the Mykolaiv region, and another two were killed in the Kharkiv region, according to local officials. On Thursday, 17 people were killed and more than 40 injured in a major Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv.
Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s military said it had carried out strikes on an oil refinery and a military airfield deep inside Russia. Kyiv says such sites are legitimate targets because they help finance Russia’s war. Ukraine has in recent months intensified strikes on Russian energy facilities and on warehouses belonging to Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries.
Civilian toll rising sharply through 2026
The attacks come against a backdrop of sharply rising civilian casualties. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine recorded 12,477 civilian casualties in the first seven months of 2026, comprising 1,839 killed and 10,638 injured. That figure represents a 44 per cent increase compared with the same period in 2025, underscoring the intensifying toll of the conflict on Ukraine’s civilian population.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow currently controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory in the south-east.
Search-and-rescue operations at the Soniachna Halereia site were continuing on Saturday, with officials saying fears remained that the death toll from the Kryvyi Rih mall attack could rise further as teams worked through the rubble.
