By Friday morning, more than a day after the missile-and-drone assaults, rescuers sifting through the rubble of collapsed buildings had raised the total killed to 31, making the strikes one of the worst bombardments of Russia’s 3½ year war. The dead included four more children, one of them two years old.

Ukrainian rescuers recovered more than a dozen more bodies from the rubble of a collapsed apartment block in Kyiv overnight, bringing the death toll from Russia's worst air strike of the year on Ukraine's capital to 31.

U krainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has called for stronger international sanctions on Russia after a deadly attack on Kyiv killed at least 31 people. Zelensky said five children - the youngest aged two - were among the dead and 159 people had been wounded in the assault on Thursday.