Three dead after missile strike on apartment block in ukraine's lviv mayor

Three dead after missile strike on apartment block in ukraine's lviv mayor

Three people were killed after a missile hit an apartment block in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, its mayor said on Thursday.

Russia regularly pounds Ukraine with missiles, artillery and drones, often prompting painful power cuts that have blocked people from warming their homes or getting drinking water.

But the Lviv region -- hundreds of kilometres from the frontlines -- has been largely peaceful.

A Russian missile made a ‘direct hit to a residential building’ in the city of Lviv, governor Maksym Kozytski said in a video posted to Telegram.

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi wrote in a post that the strike had left ‘three dead already.’

The missile caused a fire which was extinguished, Kozytski said, adding that emergency services were on the scene and rescuers were ‘sorting through the debris.’

A separate video posted by Kozytski showed a multi-storey building with part of its top floor destroyed.

‘As of now, the rubble is being dismantled. Of course, there will be injured and dead.’

‘We are doing everything possible to... save people.’

Eight people were wounded in the strike and ‘about 60 apartments’ were damaged, Sadovyi said.

‘Windows got blown out, many cars got damaged, around 50 cars... there may be more people under the rubble,’ he said on Telegram.

Earlier, he warned that ‘several’ missiles were ‘moving in the direction of the western regions,’ citing Ukraine's Air Forces Command.

Sadovyi earlier said on Telegram that a ‘series of explosions’ had been heard and warned residents to stay in shelters.

One person was in ‘serious’ condition and had been taken to hospital, he added.

Unverified videos posted to Telegram purporting to show the aftermath of the attack showed shattered glass littering the floor of what appeared to be a dormitory.

Another video showed doors removed from their hinges and debris on the floor.

It was not clear if the videos showed the same strike.

On June 20, Lviv was hit by a major Russian drone assault on Kyiv and other cities.

Russia has launched waves of drone and missile strikes across Ukraine since the February 2022 invasion.

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 spokesman for Ukraine's air forces, Yuriy Ignat, recently said that newly supplied systems were still insufficient to cover the whole country.