10 injured, several missing after Russian missile strikes in east Ukraine

The industrial region has seen some of the fiercest fighting of Russia's nearly two-year invasion, with the Kremlin claiming to have annexed it last year.

Ukraine said Thursday that 10 people including a toddler were injured by simultaneous Russian strikes on three towns in the eastern Donetsk region, with five more missing under rubble.

Rescuers work at a site of a residential building heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Novohrodivka, Donetsk region. (via REUTERS)

The industrial region has seen some of the fiercest fighting of Russia's nearly two-year invasion, with the Kremlin claiming to have annexed it last year.

Ukraine's Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said Russian forces fired six S-300 rockets on Pokrovsk, Novogrodivka and Myrnograd.

"As a result of shelling, 10 people were injured, including four children. Five more people are being searched (for) under the rubble," he said on social media.

In Pokrovsk, Klymenko said the six-month-old baby was wounded alongside boys of 13 and 16.

"One of the shells exploded in the yard of a house where a family with two children lived. As a result of the shelling, the roof and walls of the house were destroyed, and the family was buried under the rubble," he added.

Some of the most intense fighting of recent weeks has been playing out east of the three villages in the frontline town of Avdiivka.

Russian forces and their proxies have controlled large swathes of the Donetsk region since 2014, when large-scale pro-democracy protests in Ukraine led to a separatist conflict in the east.