Kiev, July 6, (dpa/GNA) – At least five people were killed in a rocket attack on a residential area of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv overnight, the Interior Ministry said on Thursday.
At least 50 people were injured, the ministry said on Telegram. A search and rescue operation was underway, it said, and so far seven people had been pulled alive from the rubble.
More than 60 people were reportedly evacuated from the destroyed houses.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram that there would “definitely be a response” to what he termed “an attack by Russian terrorists.”
Videos show heavily damaged and in some cases, almost completely destroyed homes.
The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, described it as the most serious attack on the civilian infrastructure of Lviv, since the beginning of the full-scale Russian war against Ukraine more than 16 months ago. More than 50 houses were destroyed.
Search and rescue operations were continuing. There is information that people are still trapped under the rubble, the authorities said
Lviv is also home to many refugees from the war-torn areas of eastern Ukraine. Until June, the city in the west of the country had remained relatively quiet. Then, however, it became the target of airstrikes again.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive against Russian forces at the beginning of June, and fighting has intensified in some areas.
Russian shelling in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson killed at least two people and wounded 10 others on Wednesday.
At least 84 Russian artillery attacks were reported, the region’s military governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, wrote on Telegram on Thursday. He said residential areas were hit by the attacks and that 38 projectiles were fired at the city of Kherson.
Kherson is still recovering from massive floods that followed the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in early June. The regional capital also comes repeatedly under Russian fire.
In Minsk, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed the transfer of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to his country.
A certain number of nuclear warheads had been brought to Belarusian territory, Lukashenko told a press conference in Minsk on Thursday. “You are under safe protection.”
The announcement comes ahead of a summit meeting of NATO leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Lithuania borders Russia and Belarus.
Meanwhile, Ukraine and Russia again exchanged 45 prisoners each.
On the Ukrainian side, the prisoners were soldiers, national guardsmen and civil defence personnel, the head of the presidential office in Kiev, Andriy Yermak, announced on Telegram.
The Defence Ministry in Moscow confirmed that 45 Russian soldiers had returned from captivity.
In addition, two children were handed over to their Ukrainian parents by the Russian side.
Kiev accuses the Kremlin of having “abducted” thousands of minors from the Russian-occupied territories of southern and eastern Ukraine to Russia, some of whom were given up for adoption. The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has therefore issued an international arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova.
According to Ukrainian sources, this was the 47th exchange. A total of almost 2,600 Ukrainians have returned from Russian captivity.
While contact has broken off at almost all diplomatic levels after negotiations on a peaceful solution to the conflict were halted last spring, Kiev and Moscow continue to regularly exchange prisoners of war and the bodies of the fallen.
GNA