AT LEAST FIVE people have been wounded in strikes on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, a regional governor has said.

There were reports of several explosions this afternoon, in a rare attack on on a city that has escaped serious fighting since Russian troops invaded last month.

“There were two missile strikes within Lviv,” the regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said, adding that, “according to preliminary data, five people were injured.”

The city’s mayor Andriy Sadovy said in a later post that “an industrial facility where fuel is stored caught fire” as a result of the attack.

“No residential buildings were damaged. All relevant departments are working on site,” he wrote, urging residents to remain indoors until air sirens had halted.

Videos on social media showed thick plumes of black smoke rising in the city centre and Lviv residents were standing outside their homes to observe the dark clouds. 

Kozytsky said in a later post that he had visited the scene of the strikes and that the situation was “under control”.

AFP journalists in Lviv said that medical vehicles and fire engines were responding to the incident.

Lviv had been largely untouched by violence, rendering it a key hub for people fleeing cities that have been under fierce Russian shelling for several weeks, like Kharkiv in east Ukraine.

Lviv is just 70 kilometres from the border with Poland, where US President Joe Biden has met with two Ukrainian ministers in Warsaw in the first face-to-face meeting between him and top Kyiv officials since Russia’s invasion began.

Yesterday, Russia announced that it would now be focusing its efforts on the Donbas region in the east of the country. 

With reporting by Eoghan Dalton