Kyiv, Ukraine

At least 37 people were killed after a Russian strike close to Kyiv on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, in one of the deadliest attacks to hit the country this year.

The strike sparked a fire in the Bucha district west of the capital and damaged at least 50 residential buildings, according to the head of the local regional military administration. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a warehouse in the village of Myla was hit and that a detonation followed.

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian law prohibited the storage of ammunition close to civilian homes and that criminal proceedings had been opened. He said a care home for elderly people and people with disabilities was damaged; Ukrainian media later cited the regional administration as saying that 34 of those killed were residents there.

Russia's defence ministry said it had struck a warehouse storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. The competing accounts underline the central question for the investigation: the attack itself is confirmed, while the full circumstances of the storage site and the sequence that led to the deaths remain subject to official inquiry.