A four-year-old girl has been killed in Ukrainian shelling of the city of Donetsk, its mayor, Aleksey Kulemzin, said in a Telegram statement on Wednesday. He said a shell fired by Kiev’s forces hit a residential building in one of the city districts.
The mayor also stated that an elderly woman had been killed in the same attack, but her body could not be immediately recovered from the ruins of the house that he said was “obliterated” by the strike, which left two people injured.
Photos published by Kulemzin on social media show a pile of wooden rubble and the ruins of brick walls in the place where the destroyed residential building was located. He said that a second Ukrainian attack also claimed the life of an elderly man in another district of the city.
Just a day earlier, three people were killed and 11 injured in Donetsk when Ukrainian forces allegedly used US-supplied cluster bombs to strike several districts. In total, the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) registered 95 volleys, including 349 shells fired at the city on Tuesday alone.
Shelling of Donetsk and other Donbass cities has intensified since Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine last February. Over the years, Ukraine’s military built up heavily fortified positions close to the city after the two Donbass republics declared their independence from Kiev back in 2014.
Moscow recognized the DPR and the neighboring Lugansk People’s Republic as independent states in February 2022. They have since become part of Russia alongside Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, following referendums last September.