Silhouetted against a wall of flames, firefighters struggle to control an oil depot inferno following a devastating Russian cruise missile attack on Lviv.
When the fire was finally contained 13 hours later, the city’s emergency services chief, Khrystyna Avdyeyeva, let out a defiant battle cry.
“The boys have been through hell,” said Miss Avdyeyeva. “This fire was started by non-humans. Let them burn in the same hell.”
Three rockets rocked the western Ukrainian city on Saturday afternoon, igniting fires that blazed throughout the night.
Black smoke drifted from the depot to the historical center of Lviv, stopping weekend shoppers.
Five people were injured in the attack but no one was killed.
“The third blow threw me to the ground, which was moving as if an earthquake were in progress,” said security guard Yaroslav Prokopiv.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said the attack was part of a campaign to destroy fuel and storage depots and will now scatter supplies from both.
Silhouted against a wall of flames, firefighters struggle to control an oil depot inferno after a devastating Russian cruise missile attack on Lviv
Local resident Valentina Demura, 70, reacts next to the building in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol that houses her apartment destroyed during the Ukraine-Russia conflict
Five people were injured in the attack but no one was killed. Pictured: A civilian is evacuated from Irpi
Lviv, a UNESCO World Heritage city whose churches, coffeehouses and trams are reminiscent of Vienna, has been a safe haven for tens of thousands of refugees fleeing fighting in the east of the country.
It had been untouched by the war, but the 720,000 residents were urged to remain indoors or seek shelter after the depot attack.
Two hours after the warning, three more rockets rained down on a factory repairing tanks, anti-aircraft systems and radar stations.
The facility is located behind a high-security roadblock in a densely populated area in the south-east of the city.
There were no reports of casualties.
Dmitry Leonov, a 36-year-old IT worker who lives in the neighborhood, said his windows rattled after the initial blast: “I sought refuge at an animal shelter, but my friend who was walking his dog was killed by the Violence hurled backwards the explosion.’
Three explosions were heard seconds apart in footage from a block of flats, and a fireball flew into the sky.
Plumes of smoke then rose high above the surrounding apartment blocks.
Russia’s defense ministry said yesterday it had attacked military targets in Lviv.
On Saturday, March 26, the Russian armed forces launched a missile attack with high-precision weapons on objects of Ukraine’s military infrastructure
Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the attack destroyed a large depot he claimed was supplying fuel to Ukrainian troops in combat zones.
The facility was hit with long-range weapons launched from the sea, he added.
Konashenkov said similar weapons destroyed a second target – a “military supply depot”.
Lviv police arrested two men on suspicion of espionage and accused them of “sending information to Russian recipients”.
The strikes came hours before Joe Biden strongly condemned Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a speech in Warsaw.
With the strikes, Putin was trying to say “hello” to the US President, according to Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi.
In a crowded air-raid shelter under an apartment block not far from the first blast site, Olana Ukrainets said she couldn’t believe she was going into hiding again after fleeing Kharkiv, one of the most heavily bombed cities of the war.
“We were on one side of the street and saw it on the other side,” says the 34-year-old IT worker.
“We saw fire. I said to my friend, “What is this?” Then we heard the sound of an explosion and glass breaking.”
Lviv is home to an estimated 200,000 people who fled other bombed cities and has been a staging post for most of the 3.8 million refugees who have left Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24.
Firefighters pictured try to put out the fire as flames and smoke billow after Russian guided missiles hit fuel tank attacks as Russian attacks on Ukraine continue in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv
The city is about 45 miles from the Polish border.
Russia insists it has ended its first phase of the conflict and claims it is shifting its attention to the disputed territories of eastern Ukraine.
Pentagon intelligence said Moscow has halted ground operations aimed at Kyiv and is instead focusing on attacking the eastern Donbass region.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, residents including the elderly, sick and injured continued to flee Irpin, the shelled Kyiv suburb, over the weekend.
Most were driven in private cars, ambulances and Red Cross vehicles to a roadblock and on to central Kyiv before heading west to safety.
Authorities in the capital have warned that Russians are increasingly disguising themselves as civilians to carry out acts of sabotage.
In the second-largest city of Kharkiv, which has been the target of intense shelling for weeks, authorities reported 44 artillery strikes and 140 rocket attacks in a single day, including an attack on a hospital and a humanitarian aid center that authorities said killed four .
This shows a Russian tank destroyed after a battle in the town of Trostyanets in the Sumy region
But yesterday, musicians there played an emotional concert in a subway station that served as a makeshift shelter.
It was the opening day of the Kharkiv Music Festival, which the performers wanted to celebrate at all costs.
They had something to celebrate at the end of the day as Ukrainian forces launched counterattacks to successfully recapture a number of villages around the city.
This success was repeated elsewhere in several strategically important cities, including Trostianets near the Russian border in the Sumy region.
It was one of the first places to fall under Moscow control.
Pictures showed Ukrainian soldiers and civilians among badly damaged buildings and what appeared to be abandoned or smoldering Russian tanks and other military equipment.
The city was taken by Putin’s troops on March 1st.
Poltavka and Malynivka, cities in the southeastern Zaporizhia region, were also liberated by Ukrainian forces after heavy fighting.