Buildings damaged in a Russian missile strike on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, 4 September 2024. Photo: Volodymyr Zelensky / Telegram
At least seven people were killed and a further 38 were injured in a Russian missile attack on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to Lviv Governor Maksym Kozytskyi.
Several buildings near the city’s train station caught fire as a result of the strike, which occurred at around 5am local time, Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi said, adding that three children and a 50-year-old midwife had been among those killed.
Rescue and firefighting operations were still ongoing as of 9am local time, with a total of around 75 buildings in the city’s historic centre damaged in the attack, Sadovyi later told national television channel My-Ukraina.
Kozytskyi posted a video from the scene of one of the strikes on Telegram, saying that Russia had landed two “heavy blows” on residential areas in the city and was seeking to “destroy and intimidate” by targeting “civilians in residential neighbourhoods where there are no infrastructure or military facilities”.
Five people were also injured in a Russian missile strike on the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Wednesday morning, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhiy Lysak said, adding that a child had been hospitalised following damage to a hotel and a number of high-rise buildings in the city.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Ukraine’s allies for donating air defence systems to protect the population from “Russian terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities”, calling each country that had done so “a true defender of life”.
The strikes on Lviv and Kryvyi Rih come a day after 52 people were killed and over 270 were injured in a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Poltava in one of the deadliest aerial attacks of the war so far.
Emergency services in Poltava told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne on Wednesday morning that as many as 13 people may still be trapped under the rubble of a military training facility that was destroyed in the attack.
