Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital with missiles and drones overnight into Thursday with the intense strikes causing loud explosions and shaking Kyiv for hours.

At ⁠least eight people were killed and over three dozens injured, as drones and missiles struck residential buildings and started a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

The attack with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones affected all of the city’s 10 districts, on both sides of the Dnipro River. Many residents took shelter at metro stations after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and other authorities issued the first warnings of the attack.

Russia has intensified its attacks on Kyiv in recent weeks, even as Ukraine’s own long-range drone campaign against Russian military sites and energy facilities has caused fuel shortages and disrupted supply lines inside Russia.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko urged residents to remain in shelters, describing an ongoing “furious enemy attack” on the capital.

Mr Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said separately 34 more were injured, adding that among the damages, the first to sixth floors of an apartment building collapsed after a direct hit.

In an earlier post, Mr Klitschko said the injured included paramedics and drivers at an ambulance station, and that some people were still trapped inside damaged residential buildings. Pictures posted online showed a fire burning out of control at the ‌top of a building on the central Shevchenko Boulevard, while elsewhere in ‌the city, windows blew out and cars were destroyed.

Multiple explosions were heard in Kyiv, a Reuters witness said.

Carrying children, belongings, tents and pets, people crowded into underground stations, as air raid alerts were issued for most of Ukraine’s territory on Thursday in Russia’s worst attack on the country since mid-June.

“Another ⁠horrific night for the residents of the city, who were forced to spend it in shelters,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, said in a post on X.

Neighbouring Poland, a Nato and European Union member, briefly scrambled fighter jets on Thursday as a preventive measure before calling those back and saying no airspace violation was recorded.

In the Desnianskyi district, people were trapped inside a damaged nine-story residential building and rescuers headed to the scene, Klitschko said. In the Holosiivskyi district, a fire broke out on the roof of a multistorey building.

In the Sviatoshynskyi and Darnytskyi districts, fire broke out in homes and debris trapped people in buildings.

Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said the attack partially destroyed a residential building in the Desnianskyi district, sparked fires near residential buildings at two locations in the Pecherskyi district, and ignited a fire near an administrative building in the Solomianskyi district.

He said authorities were also recording damage in the Obolonskyi and Podilskyi districts.

(With additional inputs from Reuters)