Russian missile and drone attacks injure at least 19, including children, in Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian barrage of missiles and drones targeting Ukraine's capital and the surrounding region injured at least 19 people overnight and into Thursday morning, authorities said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces carried out overnight strikes against targets in Russia, including an oil refinery in Yaroslavl and a military airfield in the Rostov region.

The Kyiv City Military Administration said the overnight attacks were recorded at more than 10 locations in the city, while 33 sites were damaged in the wider region. A 10-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy were among the injured, the administration said in a statement on Telegram.

Peace efforts to end Russia’s 4 1/2-year full-scale invasion have stalled, with the issue of territorial concessions in eastern Ukraine among the central sticking points. Successive rounds of U.S.-brokered talks have failed to produce a breakthrough. Ukraine is also seeking security guarantees from partners for a deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump claimed in a post on social media on Monday that Russia and Ukraine had mutually agreed to cease attacking each other's energy facilities, strikes that have led to significant supply issues in both countries.

In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, Zelenskyy pushed back on Trump's claim, saying that while an energy truce was discussed during a recent meeting in Kyiv with Trump’s representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, he would only enter such an agreement if Russia ceases its attacks on Ukrainian energy sites.

A Russian drone struck a civilian vessel flying the flag of Tanzania in the Black Sea on Thursday, killing the ship’s captain and injuring three crew members, according to Oleh Kiper, the regional head in Odesa.

The vessel’s superstructure and deck were damaged in the morning attack, Kiper said in a statement on Telegram. He accused Russia of deliberately targeting Ukrainian ports and civilian merchant vessels.

Ukraine’s air force said it destroyed or suppressed 131 Russian aerial targets during the overnight attack in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa regions. The attack involved ballistic and cruise missiles as well as drones and decoys.

In Odesa, seven people were injured, including two children, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. Apartments on the 14th through 16th floors of a residential building were damaged. A private residential building in Odesa was also destroyed and others damaged.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's operation against the Yaroslavl Oil Refinery was conducted jointly by the country's Security Service, special operations forces, military intelligence and the Foreign Intelligence Service.

He wrote on Telegram that the security service had also struck a military airfield in Rostov, damaging an An-12 aircraft, two An-26s and three helicopters.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the military hit metallurgical and electronics plants, factories of the military-industrial complex and energy and transport facilities. It said that three bulk carriers and a ferry carrying supplies for the Ukrainian military were hit in the port of Chornomorsk.

On Thursday, Ukraine received the bodies of 252 fallen soldiers as part of ongoing exchanges between Ukraine and Russia, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a post on Telegram.

Russia said the remains belong to Ukrainian citizens, including military personnel, the agency's statement said, adding that Ukrainian law enforcement and forensic experts will conduct examinations and work to identify the bodies.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out a fire at private homes following a Russian air attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a firefighters walk past burning cars as they work at the site, following a Russian air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during President Bashar Assad's regime is facing a possible decades-long prison sentence in the U.S.

A federal judge in Los Angeles is scheduled to sentence Samir Ousman Alsheikh on Thursday. A jury found him guilty in March of one count of conspiracy to commit torture and three counts of torture while in charge of Syria's infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.

Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.

Prosecutors say Alsheikh, seeking to quash political dissent, sent certain prisoners to a wing of Adra where they were held in small isolation cells and tortured.

At the two-week trial, three victims recounted beatings while suspended from pipes on the ceiling and the use of a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist. One person testified that Alsheikh stomped on the device with his foot, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Defendant knew that what he was doing was wrong,” DOJ prosecutors said in a sentencing memo filed this month. “Nonetheless he ordered and participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.”

The memo included statements from several victims, one of whom, Nidal Shikhani, said he can “still hear the screams of others begging for mercy, repeating, ‘Leave me, leave me.’”

The prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera for a minimum sentence of 80 years. Alsheikh's attorneys, Nina Marino and Collin Cate, have called for a five-year sentence, noting that he is 74 years old and has “significant medical and cognitive conditions.”

They also said he was willing to be deported to Syria, where a new government has sought to hold former members of the Assad regime accountable.

“Whatever moral weight this case carries in the broader arc of history — however much the world, or the victims, or the public might wish the sentence to ‘send a message’ — that desire cannot be the foundation of a just sentence,” Marino and Cate wrote in their Sept. 3 memo.

Alsheikh came to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship, but prosecutors say he concealed his involvement in torture. Federal authorities detained him at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2024.

Jurors also convicted him in March of lying to U.S. immigration authorities and fraudulently obtaining a green card and attempting to naturalize as a U.S. citizen.

The exterior of the federal courthouse is seen March 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)