Russia says two killed in Ukrainian drone attack on convent

Russian investigators said on Friday that a Ukrainian drone attack had killed two people at a convent in the Kursk region of western Russia.

The state Investigative Committee said the attack took place in late October. A Russian military blogger said the victims were two young men who were trying to evacuate people.

The committee said it had opened a case against suspected Ukrainian perpetrators. The Kursk region has seen nearly three months of intense fighting since Ukrainian troops broke across the border on Aug. 6 and seized a chunk of territory from which Russian forces are still trying to evict them.

Civilians have been killed on both sides of the war, but many more on the Ukrainian than the Russian side. Both sides deny targeting them.

The U.N. human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine put verified Ukrainian civilian casualties at 11,743 dead and 24,614 injured as of Aug. 31. Russia says several hundred of its own civilians have been killed, mostly in three western regions along the border with Ukraine.