Russian attacks on Ukraine kill two, Lviv warehouses set ablaze - officials

[September 19, 2023]  KYIV (Reuters) -Russia struck three industrial warehouses in a drone strike on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv early on Tuesday, causing a huge fire and killing at least one person, local officials said. 

Russian forces also shelled the southern city of Kherson, killing a policeman and wounding two civilians on a trolleybus, the head of the city's military administration said.

A view shows a burning industrial warehouse, damaged by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Lviv, Ukraine September 19, 2023. Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Lviv region/Handout via REUTERS

"In the morning, a 49-year-old police sergeant was killed by Russian artillery fire in Kherson," Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

In Lviv, fire fighters tackled a blaze after three industrial warehouses were hit in an attack at around 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), emergency services said.

Photos released by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine showed huge flames lighting up the sky above the burning warehouses.

Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi said the body of a man who worked at one of the warehouses had been found under the rubble.

Sadovyi said the warehouses stored windows, household chemicals, and humanitarian aid.

"I want to emphasise that these are ordinary industrial warehouses. Nothing military was stored there," regional govenor Maxim Kozitsky said on the Telegram messaging app.

He said Russian forces had launched 18 drones in the attack and that 15 had been shot down, including seven that were directly over the Lviv region.

Ukraine's air force said Russia had launched a total of 30 drones and one Iskander ballistic missile in attacks on Ukraine overnight, and that 27 of the drones had been shot down.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Moscow, which has carried out frequent air strikes on Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Russia has repeatedly attacked infrastructure critical to Ukraine's defence, energy system and agriculture but many civilians have also been killed. At least seven people were killed in July when a Russian missile slammed into a residential building in Lviv, which is far from front lines.

Moscow has denied deliberately targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; additional reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Michael Perry and Timothy Heritage)

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