Rus­sia struck the Ukrain­ian Black Sea city of Ode­sa again on Sun­day, lo­cal of­fi­cials said, keep­ing up a bar­rage of at­tacks that has dam­aged crit­i­cal port in­fra­struc­ture in south­ern Ukraine in the past week. At least one per­son was killed and 22 oth­ers wound­ed in the at­tack in the ear­ly hours.

Re­gion­al Gov. Oleh Kiper said that four chil­dren were among those wound­ed in the blasts, which se­vere­ly dam­aged the his­toric Trans­fig­u­ra­tion Cathe­dral, a land­mark Or­tho­dox cathe­dral in the city.

Ukraine’s Air Force re­port­ed on Telegram that Rus­sia had launched 19 mis­siles against the Ode­sa re­gion, in­clud­ing five high-pre­ci­sion winged Onyx mis­siles and four sea-to-shore Kali­br cruise mis­siles. It said that Ukrain­ian air de­fense had shot down nine of the mis­siles.

Rus­sia has been launch­ing per­sis­tent at­tacks on Ode­sa, a key hub for ex­port­ing grain, since Moscow can­celed a land­mark grain deal on Mon­day amid Kyiv’s grind­ing ef­forts to re­take its oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.

Kiper not­ed that six res­i­den­tial build­ings, in­clud­ing apart­ment build­ings, were de­stroyed by the strikes.

In one such case in down­town Ode­sa, some peo­ple be­came trapped in their apart­ments as a re­sult of the dam­age caused by the at­tack, which left rub­ble strewn in the street and part­ly block­ing the road, and dam­age to pow­er lines.

Svit­lana Molcharo­va, 85, was res­cued by emer­gency ser­vice work­ers. But af­ter she re­ceived first med­ical aid, she re­fused to leave her de­stroyed apart­ment.

“I will stay here,” she said to the emer­gency ser­vice work­er who ad­vised her to leave.

“I woke up when the ceil­ing start­ed to fall on me. I rushed in­to the cor­ri­dor,” said Ivan Ko­valenko, 19, an­oth­er res­i­dent of the build­ing. He came to Ode­sa hav­ing fled the city of Myko­laiv in search of a safer place to live af­ter his house was de­stroyed.

“That’s how I lost my home in Myko­laiv, and here, I lost my rent­ed apart­ment. ”

In his home, the ceil­ing par­tial­ly col­lapsed, the bal­cony came off the side of the build­ing, and all the win­dows were blown out.

The Trans­fig­u­ra­tion Cathe­dral, one of the most im­por­tant and largest Or­tho­dox Cathe­drals in Ode­sa, was se­vere­ly dam­aged.

Af­ter the fires were put out, vol­un­teers donned hard hats, shov­els and brooms at the cathe­dral to be­gin re­mov­ing rub­ble, comb­ing through to sal­vage any church ar­ti­facts — un­der the watch­ful gaze of the saints whose paint­ings re­mained in­tact.

Lo­cal of­fi­cials said that the icon of the pa­troness of the city had been re­trieved from un­der the rub­ble.

“The de­struc­tion is enor­mous, half of the cathe­dral is now roof­less,” said Archdea­con An­drii Palchuk, as cathe­dral work­ers brought doc­u­ments and valu­able items out of the build­ing, the floor of which was in­un­dat­ed with wa­ter used by fire­fight­ers to ex­tin­guish the fire.

Palchuk said the dam­age was caused by a di­rect hit from a Russ­ian mis­sile that pen­e­trat­ed the build­ing down to the base­ment and caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age. Two peo­ple who were in­side at the time of the strike were wound­ed.

“But with God’s help, we will re­store it,” he said, burst­ing in­to tears.

The cathe­dral be­longs to the Ukrain­ian Or­tho­dox Church, which has been ac­cused of links to Rus­sia. The church has in­sist­ed that it’s loy­al to Ukraine, has de­nounced the Russ­ian in­va­sion from the start and has even de­clared its in­de­pen­dence from Moscow.

But Ukrain­ian se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have claimed that some in the Ukrain­ian church have main­tained close ties with Moscow. They’ve raid­ed nu­mer­ous holy sites of the church and lat­er post­ed pho­tos of rubles, Russ­ian pass­ports and leaflets with mes­sages from the Moscow pa­tri­arch as proof that some church of­fi­cials have been loy­al to Rus­sia.

Ode­sa’s his­toric cen­ter was des­ig­nat­ed an en­dan­gered World Her­itage Site by UN­ESCO ear­li­er this year de­spite Russ­ian op­po­si­tion.

Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry said Sun­day that Russ­ian forces had at­tacked sites in Ode­sa, “where ter­ror­ist acts against the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion were be­ing pre­pared.”

The min­istry said in a state­ment that the strikes were car­ried out with sea- and air-based long-range high-pre­ci­sion weapons, and that there are “for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies” at the tar­get­ed sites.

In a lat­er state­ment, the min­istry de­nied that its at­tacks had struck the Trans­fig­u­ra­tion Cathe­dral, claim­ing that the de­struc­tion of the cathe­dral was like­ly due to “the fall of a Ukrain­ian an­ti-air­craft guid­ed mis­sile.”

In con­trast to Rus­sia’s claims, the Ukrain­ian Or­tho­dox Church said that the at­tack had been a di­rect strike, writ­ing on Face­book that “a Russ­ian rock­et hit the cen­tral al­tar.”

Ear­li­er Russ­ian at­tacks this week crip­pled sig­nif­i­cant parts of ex­port fa­cil­i­ties in Ode­sa and near­by Chornomorsk and de­stroyed 60,000 tons of grain, ac­cord­ing to Ukraine’s Agri­cul­ture Min­istry.

The at­tacks come days af­ter Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin pulled Rus­sia out of the Black Sea Grain Ini­tia­tive, a wartime deal that en­abled Ukraine’s ex­ports to reach many coun­tries fac­ing the threat of hunger.

Putin vowed to re­tal­i­ate against Kyiv for an at­tack Mon­day on the cru­cial Kerch Bridge link­ing Rus­sia with the Crimean Penin­su­la, which the Krem­lin il­le­gal­ly an­nexed in 2014.

ODE­SA, Ukraine (AP) —