LVIV, Ukraine — Six people were killed and eight injured, including a child, after launched airstrikes against the city of Lviv, Ukrainian officials said Monday, 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.
Air raid sirens sounded in Lviv after the apparent strikes, which sent a cloud of thick black smoke into the air. Shops and cafes in the usually bustling city center closed down as locals headed to underground shelters, where they searched Telegram channels for information about what wad been destroyed. News that the deadly strikes had hit near the city’s landmark train depot, the first stop for many families fleeing violence elsewhere, was interpreted as a clear message: Nowhere in Ukraine is safe from Russian attack.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the airstrikes hit “the civilian infrastructure of the old European Lviv.”
Five powerful missile strikes at once on the civilian infrastructure of the old European Lviv. The Russians continue barbarically attacking Ukrainian cities from the air, cynically declaring to the whole world their “right” to… kill Ukrainians.
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) April 18, 2022
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.