Explosions heard in western Ukraine city of Lviv; missiles strike near airport

The western Ukrainian city of Lviv has been hit by three explosions after an early morning air raid alert. At least three blasts were heard in Lviv and armed checkpoints have turned motorists back from roads toward the airport. Russian forces struck an area around Lviv’s airport in western Ukraine, said Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, with ambulances and police vehicles racing to the scene.

Writing on messaging app Telegram, Sadovy said he could not give a precise address of the targeted area” but it’s definitely not an airport”.

Mayor Andriy Sadovyi in a Facebook post said that a building used for plane maintenance was hit in early morning strikes on Lviv airport in western Ukraine. He added that the building was destroyed, but nobody was working in the plant at the time of the attack. Sadovyi said rescue teams are on the scene.

The airport is located some 70 kilometres (43 miles) from Ukraine’s border with Poland.

Meanwhile, local officials in Mariupol said more than 2,200 people have died so far in indiscriminate shelling of Mariupol, a strategic port, and 80 per cent of its housing has been destroyed.

Under new Russian shelling, rescuers were combing through the smoking rubble of the Drama Theatre, where Ukrainian officials said more than 1,000 civilians were sheltering in a basement bomb shelter when it was bombed. Human Rights Watch believes they numbered at least 500.

Among the 30,000 civilians said to have fled Mariupol so far, evacuees say they were forced to melt snow for drinking water and cook food scraps on open fires, with water and power supplies cut off.

“In the streets there are the bodies of many dead civilians,” Tamara Kavunenko, 58, told AFP after reaching the central city of Zaporizhzhia.

“It’s not Mariupol anymore,” she said. “It is hell.”

• Explosions
• Lviv
• Russia-Ukraine crisis
• Russia-Ukraine war
• armed checkpoints
• missiles strike
• near airport
• three blasts