Russia-Ukraine crisis: Russian missiles hit near Lviv airport as strikes continue

Russian forces pressed their assault on Ukrainian cities Friday, hitting a building near a western city’s airport with missiles, as world leaders pushed for an investigation of the Kremlin’s repeated attacks on civilian targets, including air strikes on schools, hospitals and residential areas.

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said on Telegram that several missiles hit a facility used to repair military aircraft and damaged a bus repair facility, though no casualties were immediately reported. The aircraft repair facility had suspended work ahead of the attack, the mayor said.

The missiles that hit Lviv were launched from the Black Sea, but two of the six that were launched were shot down, Ukrainian air force’s western command said on Facebook.

Not far from the Polish border and well behind the front lines, Lviv and the surrounding area has not been spared Russia’s attacks, the worst of which killed nearly three dozen people last weekend at a training facility near the city. Meanwhile, the city’s population has swelled by some 200,000 as people from elsewhere in Ukraine have sought shelter there.

Smoke could be seen rising from the western part of the capital Kyiv after an early morning barrage Friday. There were no immediate reports of casualties or what had been damaged.

In city after city around Ukraine, hospitals, schools and buildings where people sought safety from the bombardment have been attacked. Rescue workers searched for survivors in the ruins of a theater that served as a shelter when it was blown apart by a Russian air strike in the besieged southern city of Mariupol. And in Merefa, near the north-east city of Kharkiv, at least 21 people were killed when Russian artillery destroyed a school and a community centre, a local official said.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, dozens of bodies were brought to the morgue in just one day.

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that American officials were evaluating potential war crimes and that if the intentional targeting of civilians by Russia is confirmed, there will be “massive consequences.”

The United Nations political chief, Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo, also called for an investigation into civilian casualties, reminding the UN Security Council that international humanitarian law bans direct attacks on civilians.

She said many of the daily attacks battering Ukrainian cities “are reportedly indiscriminate” and involve the use of “explosive weapons with a wide impact area.” DiCarlo said the devastation in Mariupol and Kharkiv “raises grave fears about the fate of millions of residents of Kyiv and other cities facing intensifying attacks.”

In Mariupol, hundreds of civilians were said to have taken shelter in a grand, columned theatre in the city’s centre when it was hit Wednesday by a Russian airstrike. More than a day later, there were no reports of deaths and conflicting reports on whether anyone had emerged from the rubble. Communications are disrupted across the city and movement is difficult because of shelling and other fighting.

Satellite imagery on Monday from Maxar Technologies showed huge white letters on the pavement outside the theater spelling out “CHILDREN” in Russian — “DETI” — to alert warplanes to the vulnerable people hiding inside.

“We hope and we think that some people who stayed in the shelter under the theatre could survive,” Petro Andrushchenko, an official with the mayor’s office, told The Associated Press. He said the building had a relatively modern basement bomb shelter designed to withstand air strikes. Other officials said earlier that some people had gotten out.