Explosions in Kyiv after air raid alerts across Ukraine

Missile fragments have crashed into the grounds of a children's hospital in Kyiv and explosions have rocked the Ukrainian capital as air defences responded to a Russian air strike.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said no one was hurt at the hospital. 

Missile debris also damaged the roof of a house and fell on a complex of country homes in the capital's northern Obolon district, he said.

"We should thank our air defence forces for shooting down the missiles," city official Mykhailo Shamanov said on television after the strike.

Explosions were also reported in the western region of Khmelnytskyi where officials said air defences were at work. 

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties from the area.

Authorities issued a nationwide air alert before the attack, and social media monitors reported several Russian warplanes that carry long-range missiles had taken off from Russian air bases.

The air force reported Russia had launched hypersonic Kinzhal missiles at the Kyiv region, while city officials confirmed the capital's air defences were at work.

Witnesses in the city centre said they heard two loud explosions but could not tell where they were coming from.

"Explosions in the city. Stay in shelters!" Klitschko wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The West has supplied sophisticated air defence systems to Ukraine to help defend itself from regular waves of Russian missile and drone strikes.

Those air defences have allowed Kyiv to fend off the full brunt of Russia's air strikes in recent months, but other areas of Ukraine, a country double the size of Italy, are more thinly protected.

Russia has struck Ukrainian cities far from the front lines throughout its war, often hitting civilian targets. 

Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians.

In Russia, air defences on Friday downed a Ukrainian drone as it flew towards an unspecified target in Moscow, the defence ministry said - the latest in a flurry of drone attacks on the Russian capital.

Earlier, Moscow's Vnukovo airport and Kaluga airport, some 150km southwest of the capital, were temporarily shut due to a suspected drone flight. 

They later reopened.

"An attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on a facility in Moscow was thwarted," the ministry said in a statement, adding the drone was jammed and crashed in a forest west of Moscow.

"There are no casualties and no damage."

Earlier, Vnukovo airport said it had been compelled to suspend all flights "for reasons beyond the control of the airport", adding some flights had been redirected to other airports in the Moscow region. 

It gave no further information.

Flights later resumed at both Vnukovo and Kaluga airports.

Drone air strikes deep inside Russia have increased since a drone was destroyed over the Kremlin in early May. 

Civilian areas of the capital were hit later in May and a Moscow business district was targeted twice in three days earlier this month.

Russia said on Thursday it had downed 13 Ukrainian drones seeking to attack Moscow and also the largest city in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

In recent days, Ukrainian remotely piloted boats, also referred to as drones, have attacked a Russian fuel tanker and a navy base at Russia's Novorossiysk port on the Black Sea.

Ukraine typically does not comment on who is behind attacks on Russian territory, although officials have publicly expressed satisfaction with them.

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