KYIV, Ukraine >> The final death toll from a weekend Russian missile strike on an apartment building in southeastern Ukraine reached 44, officials said Tuesday, as the body of another child was pulled from the wreckage. The strike in Dnipro was the war’s deadliest attack since the spring on civilians at one location.

Those killed in the Saturday afternoon strike included five children, and 79 people were injured, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office. The final toll included two dozen people initially listed as missing at the multistory building, which housed about 1,700, he said.

Emergency crews cleared some 9.9 tons of rubble during a nonstop search and rescue operation, the Dnipro City Council said. Some 400 people lost their homes, with 72 apartments completely ruined and another 236 damaged beyond repair, it added. The deadly Russian strike prompted the surprise resignation on Tuesday of a Ukrainian presidential adviser who said the Russian missile exploded and fell after the Ukrainian air defense system shot it down, a version that would take some of the blame off the Kremlin’s forces.

Oleksii Arestovich’s comments in a Saturday night interview caused an outcry. He said as he quit that his remarks were “a fundamental mistake.” Ukraine’s air force had stressed that the country’s military did not possess a system capable of downing Russia’s Kh-22 missiles.