Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko reported on Thu
rsday that at least four people were killed and another nine were injured.
Lviv’s Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said on his Telegram channel that rescuers were working to “clear debris and pull out all the dead” from the attack that had destroyed or damaged about 60 apartments and 50 cars.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media early on Thursday to condemn the attack on civilians in Lviv, and to offer his condolences to the relatives of those killed as well as promise a “strong” response “to the enemy”.
Zelenskyy’s post on Twitter featured a video which showed the extent of damage to a building in Lviv
Lviv’s regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi also posted a 13-second video clip showing a wide, curving, four-storey apartment building with parts of the upper floors missing or in rubble.
Kozytskyi said earlier that a critical infrastructure facility had been damaged, without providing further details.
The reports of damage and civilian deaths in Lviv followed air raid alerts across Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday morning and reports of cruise missiles entering Ukrainian airspace.
Sadovyi, the city’s mayor, had reported a series of explosions in his city.
“Friends, we will not talk about the consequences of shelling now,” he said on his Telegram channel earlier. “All the city services are doing their work,” he said.
Russia has launched waves of drone and missile attacks across Ukraine since its invasion in February 2022, though the Lviv region – which is located hundreds of kilometres from the front lines – had been largely peaceful. In late June, Lviv was hit in an extensive Russian drone assault that had hit Kyiv and other cities.
Ukraine has recently bolstered its air defence systems with Western-supplied weapons and the number of Russian missiles and drones breaking through has diminished.
But the spokesperson for Ukraine’s air forces, Yuriy Ignat, recently said that newly supplied air defence systems were still insufficient to cover the entire country.
