Afghan Voice Agency (AVA) - Monitoring: Some 20 civilians were wounded in the “horrendous” attack on Sunday, he wrote in a post on Telegram, RT reported.
Many of the injured are in a serious condition, including with “penetrating wounds in the area of vital organs and traumatic amputation of limbs”, according to the official. Two children were wounded in the bombardment, with their condition described as moderate, the regional chief added.
The bombardment, which hit the Kirov District in the Southwest of the city, was carried out with the use of 152mm and 155mm munitions, Pushilin said.
Earlier on Sunday, the republic’s Joint Center for Control and Coordination said three shells were fired at the Kirov District shortly after 10am local time (8am GMT) and three more around ten minutes later.
The mayor of Donetsk, Aleksey Kulemzin, condemned the attack as “another dark day in the history of the city”. Ukrainian forces “wickedly” decided to bring death and destruction on the civilians of Donetsk to avenge failures on the battlefield, he wrote on Telegram.
Donetsk, which is located close to the frontline, and other towns and villages in the republic, have been targeted by Ukrainian forces on almost a daily basis since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Sunday’s attack, however, was among the city’s worst.
Ukraine’s first deadly bombardment of Donetsk in 2024 took place shortly after midnight on January 1, claiming four lives. Earlier this week, six civilians were wounded in a Ukrainian shelling of the town of Gorlovka, with a kindergarten and a hotel among the affected buildings.
Later, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the shelling of the Russian city of Donetsk is “a barbaric terrorist act” carried out by Ukraine with the support of the West.
It has been established that Sunday's bombardment of a busy market in the capital of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic was inflicted with weapons supplied to Kiev by the US and its allies, the ministry said in a statement.
“This again confirms [the West’s] direct involvement in the conflict and makes it complicit in the criminal acts of the Zelensky regime, which has once again displayed its inhumanity and hatred towards innocent people,” it said.
“The West’s unrestrained desire to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia through the hands of their Ukrainian puppets, whom it is eager to support mindlessly and without limit, is pushing the Kiev regime to increasingly reckless steps, including acts of terrorism, massive violations of international humanitarian law, and war crimes,” the ministry added.
Russia is calling on governments and international bodies to condemn this “treacherous attack on the civilian population”, it stated. Failure to do so would be a sign of “silent approval of the murders of civilians” that would only encourage Kiev “to commit even more bloody atrocities”, it also pointed out./Fars news