Five dead in Russian attack near Donetsk, Ukrainian official says

Steph Deschamps / March 21, 2022

 

The town of Avdiivka, close to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, was the target of a Russian attack on Monday evening, killing at least five people and wounding 19 others, Lyudmila Denissova, a human rights officer in the Ukrainian parliament, said Tuesday.

  

Five civilians were killed and 19 wounded, the Ukrainian official said on her Telegram channel, indicating that Avdiivka had been targeted by artillery fire and (Russian) aerial bombardment, completely destroying the village. Avdiivka, home in peacetime to 30,000 residents, is located in the northwestern suburbs of Donetsk, an industrial center in eastern Ukraine held since 2014 by Moscow-backed pro-Russian separatists. In Lissitchansk, 150 km northeast of Donetsk, two more people were killed, three wounded and eight rescued from the rubble following another strike by the Russian army, she continued.

   

In another message on her Telegram channel posted later in the morning, Lyudmila Denissova said that a Russian tank fired in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine at a car carrying a family with two children. The family reportedly shouted that they were civilians and waved a white flag, to no avail, she said. The parents and their nine-year-old daughter died and a 17-year-old was injured, she added.