KYIV, Ukraine -- At least 12 people were killed and 33 wounded on Tuesday when a Russian missile hit a regional government building in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, emergency officials said.

The strike hit the nine-storey building shortly before 9 am local time, destroying the entire central part of the structure.

"The bodies of 12 people have been recovered from the site of the destruction and 33 people have been injured," Ukraine's emergencies agency said in a statement on Telegram.

Photos posted by the agency showed rescue workers clearing the rubble and a female medical worker in a red suit helping an injured man lying on a stretcher, his face bloodied.

Earlier in the day officials spoke of nine people being killed and 28 injured.

In a video address to the Danish parliament earlier Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack.

"The residents of Mykolaiv posed no threat to Russia. And despite all this, like all Ukrainians, they became the targets of Russian troops," Zelensky said.

After a lull in the fighting that lasted several days, the attack on Tuesday morning surprised this city, which is home to half a million people in peacetime.

Mykolaiv stands on the road to Odessa, Ukraine's largest port in the south.

The front line in the region has recently shifted southeast to Mykolaiv, which is located near Kherson, the only major Ukrainian city that Russia claims to have taken under full control since the war started over a month ago.