At least seven people were killed and 117 injured when a Russian missile struck a theatre and a central square in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, the interior ministry has said. A six-year-old child was among the dead and their mother was seriously injured. Another 11 children were wounded, as were 10 police officers, according to the ministry. Twenty-five people were admitted to hospital. People had been on their way to church to celebrate a religious holiday when a missile hit the city’s landmark Drama Theatre, the ministry said. “A Russian missile hit right in the centre of the city, in our Chernihiv. A square, the polytechnic university, a theatre,” Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was on a working visit to Sweden, posted on Telegram. A brief film of a woman in a summer dress posing for the camera appeared to show the moment of the strike in the background, with a missile striking the roof of the theatre and a fire trail travelling beyond towards the ground. Another video accompanying the Ukrainian president’s post showed debris scattered across a square in front of the regional theatre, where parked cars were heavily damaged. One body could also be briefly seen in the video slouched inside a car. Another photograph showed a body on the ground next to a puddle of blood as images of the incident circulated on social media. “Let’s do even more to consolidate the world against Russian terror. Let’s give even more to our state to protect life. Russia must lose this war for life to win,” the president added. Ukrainian media reported that a public event featuring drone manufacturers had been taking place inside the theatre at the time of the attack. The interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said only that an event had been taking place in the building and that Ukraine’s domestic security service was investigating the matter. Maria Berlinska, a Ukrainian activist, posted on Facebook that there was a drone conference taking place at the drama theatre but it had been stopped when an air raid siren sounded. The location of the event had only circulated to participants “a few hours” before the event started. Organisers were now co-operating with the SBU security service as part of their inquiries. The roof of the theatre collapsed subsequently, the interior ministry said, after a fire which was extinguished by the emergency services. Chernihiv is a historic city known for its medieval churches and its centre has no obvious military significance. The Russian border is about 50 miles to the north-east, but the front in the east of Ukraine is more than 300 miles away. Russia has previously attacked Ukrainian cities far from the frontline with missiles and drones as part of its full-scale invasion launched in February 2022. A deliberate or reckless strike on civilian areas or buildings is considered to be a war crime by the international community. Kyiv’s air force said early on Saturday that the Ukrainian military had shot down 15 out of 17 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched by Moscow in an overnight strike. Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said it had destroyed a Ukrainian drone in the Belgorod region and jammed another near Moscow. A third struck a military airfield in the Novgorod region, damaging a warplane, it also said. Zelenskiy was in Sweden on Saturday, his first visit since the invasion, and will meet officials as well as King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. Sweden abandoned its longstanding policy of military nonalignment to support Ukraine with weapons and other aid in the war against Russia. It also applied for Nato membership but is still waiting to join.