Ukrainian officials said six people were killed and eight injured, including a child, after Russia launched airstrikes against the city of Lviv, amid renewed attacks in northern and western Ukraine over the weekend.
The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, said Monday in a post on Telegram that five missiles had struck Lviv and that emergency responders were on their way. Lviv’s regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, said it was four missile strikes, three on military infrastructure and one on a tire-fitting facility. Six people were killed, and eight were injured, including one child, he said, adding that the strikes badly damaged the facilities and sparked fires that were still being extinguished as of about 10 a.m. local time.
The BBC reported that air raid sirens sounded for about 45 minutes, followed by “at least five explosions in western Lviv,” with “thick black and grey smoke … rising from the site of the blasts.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the airstrikes hit “the civilian infrastructure of the old European Lviv.”
Ukraine’s national rail company, Ukrzaliznytsia, said passengers waiting to board trains in Lviv were placed in bomb shelters Monday morning when air raid sirens went off. Around 9:30 a.m. local time, it said the sirens had stopped and train traffic had resumed.
The reports of missile strikes come after explosions were reported over the weekend in Lviv and around the capital, Kyiv. Moscow warned it would step up these attacks in retaliation for Ukrainian strikes after Ukraine claimed it destroyed Moscow’s flagship in the Black Sea, the Moskva, with an anti-ship missile.
Russia continues to focus most of its military efforts on fighting in the east.
