At least nine dead in Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk – monitor
Ukrainian shelling has left nine civilians dead and more than a dozen injured in the Russian city of Donetsk, according to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) monitoring group. Residential areas were hit by fire from multiple rocket launchers, with a passenger bus being destroyed and a local hospital suffering damage.
“Today, the central districts of the capital of the republic were subjected to another brutal shelling by the armed units of Ukraine,” Denis Pushilin, the interim head of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), wrote in a Telegram post. According to the official, Ukrainian forces targeted a local hospital, an urban park, and several residential buildings.
At least seven fatalities resulted from the destruction of the bus, including one child. The vehicle apparently suffered a direct, or a very close hit, bursting into in flames, footage from the scene has shown. All of the passengers on board were said to have been killed, and the vehicle completely burned out.
Ukrainian forces also directly struck the Donetsk trauma center, inflicting material damage on the DPR’s only magnetic resonance imaging scanner, the local health ministry told TASS.
The shelling also damaged and partially destroyed multiple residential houses across the city. Nineteen civilians received injuries of varying severity and were hospitalized, according to local officials. Later in the day, the JCCC provided a revised tally of the shelling, stating that a total of nine civilians were killed and 16 injured in the attacks on the city.
Formerly part of Ukraine, the DPR was incorporated into Russia last October together with the People’s Republic of Lugansk (LPR) and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions. The areas joined Russia following referendums in which the local populations overwhelmingly backed the move.
