KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone struck a school in Kyiv on Thursday, city officials said, as the Ukrainian capital endured another day of relentless aerial attacks.
Children and staff at the school were in shelters when the drone hit, Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said, and its warhead didn’t explode. No casualties were reported, but the building’s brick facade showed a large hole, revealing a staircase, and burn marks alongside smashed windows.
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A police officer carries fragments of a Shahed drone in front of a school damaged by a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A police officer and a rescue worker carry an unexploded warhead from a Shahed drone out of a school damaged by a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Police officers carry an unexploded warhead from a Shahed drone out of a school damaged by a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Police officers look at a school damaged by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Kyiv has felt like a city under siege in recent weeks, with repeated air raid alerts, punctuated by loud explosions from drone and missile strikes. The onslaught aims to terrorize civilians, officials and analysts say, and break their will to resist 4½ years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The strain is showing. Maryna Lystopad, 35, said her hair has started falling out due to the stress from escalating attacks and never knowing where the next attack will hit.
"It’s really horrible. I can’t take it anymore. I think, I think that soon we’re all going to leave. I’m really not doing well,” she told The Associated Press. “I’m constantly anxious. I can’t relax. I keep thinking that if something happens, if something hits, one of my relatives could be killed.”
Lystopad said she recently had to travel to another part of Kyiv and had been “genuinely stressed" the whole way there.
“I kept checking, like, whether anything was flying in, where it was going, where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to run?” she said.
The front line in eastern and southern Ukraine hasn’t seen major shifts since last year, but the country is struggling to fend off Russia’s intensified aerial attacks on cities that include ballistic missiles and high-flying jet-powered drones.
In response, Ukraine has fired its long-range drones at manufacturing plants deep inside Russia and has targeted Russia’s drone launch sites. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that Kyiv’s forces struck a site in Russia’s southwestern Oryol region that is used to store and launch attack drones.
To turn the tide, Ukraine needs U.S.-made Patriot missiles that can effectively defend against ballistic missiles, but they are in short supply since the Iran war began. A plan to produce them inside Ukraine could take years to bear fruit.
Kyiv is racing to produce interceptors that can bring down fast-moving jet-propelled drones as the swift cycle of military innovation during the war continues.
Ukraine also wants tougher sanctions imposed on Russia to prevent it from getting key high-tech components for its arsenal.
Britain on Thursday imposed sanctions on 31 Russian individuals, entities and ships it says are linked to disinformation, attempts to avoid energy sanctions and the mistreatment of Ukrainian civilians in areas seized in the war by Russia.
Moscow, meanwhile, is pressing its advantage before Ukraine comes up with an answer to the latest challenges.
Two Russian drones hit an important bridge across the Dnipro River in Kyiv on Thursday, Klitschko said, with traffic suspended until a safety inspection could be done.
Ukrainian officials didn’t report any energy infrastructure being hit Thursday, a day after what officials said was the biggest Russian attack on the power grid since spring.
Wednesday's barrage marked “the beginning of Russia’s strike campaign aimed at degrading Ukraine’s energy security ahead of winter … and forcing Ukraine to capitulate,” said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
Russia is expected to step up attacks on the electricity supply as the weather gets colder. It was 19 degrees Celsius (66 F) in Kyiv on Thursday, and mild temperatures were set to continue.
In a surprise development, Russia for the first time on Wednesday used a jet-powered drone fitted with a warhead designed to sever high-voltage pylons, said Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelenskyy on defense technology.
AP reporter Volodymr Yurchuk in Kyiv contributed.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
A police officer carries fragments of a Shahed drone in front of a school damaged by a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A police officer and a rescue worker carry an unexploded warhead from a Shahed drone out of a school damaged by a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Police officers carry an unexploded warhead from a Shahed drone out of a school damaged by a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Police officers look at a school damaged by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Investigators worked Thursday to determine why an Omani pilot stabbed the captain of a flight to Israel, causing the plane to plummet dangerously before others on board landed it in Saudi Arabia.
Passengers on the FlyDubai plane — which was carrying 174 people, mostly Israelis, from the United Arab Emirates to Tel Aviv — have described how the bloodied Indian captain managed to open the cockpit door to let them in before they grappled with the copilot and stabilized a descent so sharp that the plane’s rudder was torn away.
“We felt helpless, suspended in midair, and I didn’t know who to turn to. But it was all instinct to survive,” Asaf Rajuan, who was among those who intervened, said in a statement shared by Israel’s presidency.
A regional official briefed on the investigation said the suspect, an Omani citizen, was under arrest and confirmed that Saudi authorities were working with countries, including Israel, to try to determine a motive. He said the UAE, the United States and Oman also were involved.
“All possible scenarios, from terrorism to mental disorders, are being looked into. Nothing is ruled out for now,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing probe.
Video shot inside the plane by Shota Musayev, a dentist who treated the captain, shows the copilot on his knees, with his hands tied behind his back. The copilot’s name has not been released, and his condition was not known.
Capt. Smit Machchhar, widely praised as one of the heroes of the flight, was reportedly in stable condition, the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia said overnight.
Israeli intelligence and security officials were in Saudi Arabia to help investigate the copilot, according to another regional official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Israel has requested that the copilot be sent to Israel for the investigation, though it is unclear if that request will be granted, the official said.
Saudi Arabia does not have formal diplomatic ties with Israel, but the countries have long cooperated on security and intelligence matters through alternative channels.
The UAE government said its own investigation team had begun looking into the attack and “whether it was linked to any terrorist purpose,” noting its authorities have jurisdiction because the plane is registered there and UAE law applies to crimes committed on board.
Asked if there is any indication of Iranian involvement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News “it’s too early to say.”
Netanyahu said he also spoke with the UAE’s president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who agreed that Israel would join the interrogation of the suspect.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he and Netanyahu discussed the incident “at length” by phone and it seemed as though the copilot “was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job.”
Oman's government has not commented.
Netanyahu had warned in recent days of heightened security threats, though he told CNN that Israel had received no specific warning.
The country is a week away from the anniversary of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which has triggered the war in Gaza — and weeks away from an election.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said most of the people on board were from Israel, along with others from India and the UAE. The U.S. State Department said four passengers had American citizenship.
FlyDubai has said its flights to and from Israel would be suspended. Netanyahu told CBS that Israel plans to fly home anyone stranded in Dubai as a result.
In the chaos that began about two and a half hours after takeoff, the flight descended from 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet (around 10,000 meters to 5,100 meters) in about a minute, before making an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border and landing in Tabuk, according to Flightradar24. The site identified the aircraft as a Boeing 737 Max 8.
FlyDubai said crew members on board helped secure the plane but released no details about them.
The head of the New Zealand flight school where the Indian captain trained, Philip Kean, called it “miraculous in the way that the airplane was never, ever kind of designed for that sort of dive and survive that, the airplane actually didn’t break up completely.”
Trump praised the U.S.-based Boeing for producing a plane “that was able to withstand G Forces and Strain far beyond what it was designed.”
During the frantic search for a place to land, a person who heard the flight’s communications with air traffic control described the plane being turned away by Saudi Arabia and Jordan before eventually landing in Tabuk in Saudi Arabia while passengers screamed in the background. The pilot’s voice was trembling as he called “mayday” and said a hijacking was taking place.
The air traffic controllers gave no reason for the refusals. The person who heard the communications spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Magdy reported from Cairo and Anna from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayoun, with blood stains on his shirt, who was aboard a Flydubai aircraft that made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, is welcomed at the arrivals gate at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Tomer Appelbaum)
An FlyDubai plane carrying Israeli passengers who had earlier been aboard another FlyDubai aircraft that made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia approaches Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Passengers who experienced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, during a flight on FlyDubai plane, arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayoun, with blood stains on his shirt, who was aboard a Flydubai aircraft that made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, is welcomed at the arrivals gate at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Tomer Appelbaum)
