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A mother and her three daughters were among seven people killed in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, during a fresh wave of Russian attacks. A baby and another girl were also killed, officials said.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy said Russia had attacked with drones and hypersonic missiles early on Wednesday.
The attack came as Ukraine reeled from Russia’s deadliest single bombardment this year – a strike on a military institute in the central city of Poltava that left 53 people dead.
Explosions were also heard on Wednesday over the capital Kyiv as air defences targeted Russian missiles. Five people were wounded in Kryvyy Rih when a hotel was hit and nearby blocks of flats were damaged.
President Volodymyr Zelensky/XThe attack on Lviv in the far west of Ukraine came as all of Ukraine was under air raid alert. Witnesses said the city was targeted at about 05:40 (02:40 GMT).
Russia’s defence ministry said it had fired Kinzhal hypersonic weapons at Ukrainian defence industry facilities in Lviv and that all designated targets had been hit.
However, Mr Sadovy said Russia’s attack had damaged more than 50 buildings in the historic heart of Lviv, including homes, schools and clinics.
He posted a picture on social media of a local family, saying that only the father had survived. His wife, Yevgenia, and their three daughters – Darina, Emilia and 21-year-old Yaryna – all died in their own home, he said.
Andriy Sadovy/TelegramThe Ukrainian air force said Russia had fired 13 missiles and 29 attack drones and that seven cruise missiles and 22 drones were shot down.
Mr Sadovy said some buildings were struck near the railway station and Lviv regional administration head Maksym Kozytskyi said residential buildings had been damaged in the attack.
Lviv has largely been spared the worst of the fighting over the two and a half years of war, but last week, Russian strikes targeted its energy infrastructure causing outages, according to officials.
President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his calls for Ukraine’s Western allies to all their long-range weapons to be fired further into Russia.
In Poltava, rescue workers continued to search through the rubble of the military communications institute for survivors of the attack.
Mykyta Petrov, a 26-year-old cadet who only started there two weeks ago, said two missiles hit shortly after 09:00 (06:00 GMT) on Tuesday, the second detonating just three seconds after the first.
“I ran outside, there was smoke and dust everywhere…lots of people were outside having a cigarette, and many were killed.”
The cadet said there was “too much blood, too many dead bodies”, and what he had seen had affected him psychologically.
An air raid siren had gone off two minutes earlier, but had not given people enough time to reach bomb shelters.
