Fatalities reported as Russia and Ukraine exchange strikes

Russia bombed a hardware superstore in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least six people and wounding 40, Ukraine officials said, in an attack condemned as "vile" by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram that six people "died on the spot", 40 were wounded and 16 missing after two guided Russian bombs hit the store.

Two of those killed "were men who worked in the hypermarket", Synegubov said earlier in a video on Telegram.

Thick black smoke billowed from the gutted building of the Epitsentr DIY superstore in the northeastern outskirts of the city, as firefighters sprayed water on a blaze sparked by the strikes, AFP journalists saw.

The Epitsentr chain sells household and DIY goods.

Still wearing her uniform, Lyubov, a cleaner at the hypermarket, told how she escaped the building.

"It happened all of a sudden. We didn't understand at first, everything went dark and everything started falling on our heads," she said.

"It was good that my phone lit up, thanks to the flashlight I found where to go, but in front of us everything was burning already."

Casualties in Ukraine's attack on Belgorod

Ukrainian attacks on Saturday killed three residents in southern Russia's Belgorod region, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

Gladkov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said a man and a woman had died in the village of Oktyabrsky in a multiple rocket attack and 10 were injured. An attack on the village of Dubovoye killed a woman working in her garden.

Gladkov said air defence units had intercepted 15 airborne targets.