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Russia has launched a massive wave of air strikes on Ukraine, authorities reported on March 9, causing casualties and multiple power cuts across the country and halting the power supply of the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhya as the battle for Bakhmut in the east raged on.

At least four people were killed in the strikes on the western city of Lviv, regional Governor Maksym Kozytskiy said.

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“At this moment, we know about four dead adults: two men and two women. They were at home when the missile hit. The debris is still being sorted. There may be other people under the rubble,” Kozytskiy said, adding that three residential buildings had been destroyed.

One person was killed and two were wounded in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Governor Serhiy Lysak reported.

At least two people were injured in a strike on Kyiv’s Sviatoshyn district, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram, as air-raid sirens sounded across the capital and electricity and heating supplies were interrupted.

“Sviatoshyn district. All emergency services rushing to the place. Cars are burning in the yard of one of the residential buildings. The air alert continues. Stay in shelters. Two victims in Sviatoshyn district. Medics are providing help on the spot,” Klitschko wrote on Telegram.

Klitschko said the Holosiyivskiy district of the capital was also hit, without providing further details.

The northern city of Zhytomyr was targeted by a swarm of Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones overnight, Mayor Serhiy Sukhomlin said. No casualties were reported, Sukhomlin said, but utilities were interrupted.

“There is no water coming out of the taps, most of the houses in the city have no electricity — all this after the night attack on Zhytomyr by the Shaheds,” said Sukhomlin in a video message.

Russian strikes also targeted the Odesa and Kharkiv regions, local authorities reported, causing power outages and damaging railway infrastructure.

Russia will be held responsible for “terrorizing civilians,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned in an online statement.

“The occupiers can only terrorize civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” Zelenskiy said.

The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was cut off from the country’s electricity grid by the Russian missile attack and the plant is currently running on 18 diesel generators, said Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company Enerhoatom and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.

The IAEA said eight of the 20 diesel generators at the plant were providing “essential” power while the other generators are in standby mode. It said in a statement that there is enough diesel on site for 15 days of operation and that two out of the plant’s six reactors were shut down.

WATCH: Ukrainian emergency services hold a nuclear disaster drill in the country’s Zaporizhzhya region after repeated shelling at the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

Enerhoatom said the plant’s fifth and sixth reactors had been shut down and the diesel generators that keep the plant running have enough fuel for only 10 days.

It is the first time since November 23 that the plant, which is under Russian control but is being operated by Ukrainian technicians, has lost all power.

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi warned about the risks posed by such shutdowns.

“Each time we are rolling a dice,” said Grossi. “And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out.”

Russian-installed authorities in the Moscow-occupied part of the Zaporizhzhya region said the incident was “a provocation” by Ukraine.

The fresh wave of Russian strikes came as Ukrainian forces were under increasing pressure in Bakhmut, where a fierce battle for the control of the city in the eastern Donetsk city has been going on for months.

Ukrainian defenders repelled more than 110 attacks in the area, the General Staff of the Armed Forces reported in its daily bulletin.

Both sides are believed to have suffered heavy losses in the battle for the city, which had a pre-war population of 70,000, but has now largely been deserted as civilians fled the fighting.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on March 8 that Russian forces, despite incurring serious losses, may still be on the verge of taking Bakhmut.

Military experts say Bakhmut has little strategic value for Russia, which is aiming for a much-needed symbolic victory after suffering several setbacks in the last several months.

Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on March 8 that Ukraine’s longtime resistance in Bakhmut should be considered a “victory.”

With reporting by Reuters and AFP