At least eight people were injured and several buildings damaged in an overnight Russian airstrike in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine said today, adding that its air defense systems destroyed 20 drones and four cruise missiles.

Anticipating a Ukrainian counterattack, Russia has stepped up its missile and drone strikes this month after a nearly two-month lull. Waves of attacks hit Ukraine several times a week and are the worst in the war that has been raging since Russia invaded the country last February.

“Russian invaders attacked military and infrastructure facilities of Ukraine’s eastern outpost — the city of Dnipro,” the Ukrainian air force said on the Telegram messaging app.

“The attack was carried out with 16 different types of missiles and 20 Shahed-136/131 unmanned combat aircraft,” he clarified, adding that the air defense systems shot down 20 Russian drones and 4 cruise missiles.

At least one person was injured in the attack in the city of Dnipro and 7 in an attack in the Sinelnikivskiy district of the Dnipropetrovsk region in which Dnipro is located, according to a Telegram post by the governor of the region, Serhii Lysak.

Too many buildings, including houses, apartment buildings and administrative infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, he noted.

Reuters was unable to independently verify this information.

At the same time, the mayor of Dnipro, Boris Filatov, noted in his post on Telegram that “(the city) had never received shelling on such a scale since the beginning of the war”.

Dnipro, a city of nearly one million people before the Russian invasion, is 125 kilometers from the current front line.

“The people of Dnipro did not sleep and prayed for their parents and friends,” Filatov continued.

The regional governor Lisak clarified for his part about the injured that “women between the ages of 52 and 70 are hospitalized” and also that the Russian strikes “damaged several buildings of the first aid unit” in the area. He also noted that “two fires broke out, which have already been extinguished. Over 10 trucks and vehicles were destroyed (and) 25 vehicles and 2 buses were also damaged.”