At least five people wounded Saturday in two strikes on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the regional governor said, in a rare attack on a city that has escaped serious fighting since Russian troops invaded last month.
“There were two missile strikes within Lviv,” the regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said, adding that, “According to preliminary data, five people were injured.” Plumes of thick smoke could be seen by AFP journalists in the city centre.
The city’s mayor Andriy Sadovy said in a later post that “an industrial facility where fuel is stored caught fire” as a result of the attack.
“No residential buildings were damaged. All relevant departments are working on site,” he wrote, urging residents to remain indoors until air sirens had halted.
Plumes of thick smoke could be seen in the city centre and Lviv residents were standing outside their homes to observe the dark clouds billowing in the wind.
Kozytsky, the governor, added in a later post that he had visited the scene of the strikes and that the situation was “under control”.
AFP journalists in Lviv said that medical vehicles and fire engines were responding to the incident.
Lviv had been largely untouched by violence, rendering it a key hub for people fleeing cities that have been under fierce Russian shelling for several weeks, like Kharkiv in east Ukraine.
The city is just 70 kilometres (45 miles) from the border with Poland, where US President Joe Biden is currently visiting to shore up support for the fellow NATO-member, just over one month into Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
