At least 11 have been killed in shelling of the Donetsk city in the east of the country by Ukrainian troops, the city residents said on Thursday. Ten people were killed in a culture centre fire as a result of shell explosion. A repair worker of Ukraine’s DTEK energy holding was also killed in the shelling.
The city’s regional clinical hospital was grossly damaged by fire from the Grad multiple rocket launch system late on Wednesday. The number of casualties is being ascertained.
According to local residents, the flights of surveillance drones precede Ukrainian troops’ artillery strikes on social facilities. A day before the shelling they saw a drone hovering over the area.
The local residents fear that artillery fire from the airport area will again be aimed at a hospital.
Ukrainian aircraft have been flying over Donetsk since the early morning on Thursday. Eyewitnesses said a plane dropped a cargo for the Ukrainian security forces, blocked in the airport area and then was performing surveillance flights over the city.
The local residents expect new airstrikes on Thursday. They say the Ukrainian troops are targeting Orthodox Christian holidays, as Thursday is Assumption Day.
During the night, Ukrainian army’s shelling destroyed apartment houses in two city districts and a civil registry office. One shell hit a city school, destroying it beyond repair.
The situation in eastern Ukraine was described as a catastrophic, full-blown war by Russia’s UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, during the latest UN Security Council meeting. Russia has also called for an international humanitarian mission to be launched.
Fighting between Kiev’s army and self-defense forces intensified on Tuesday, with the Ukrainian military using heavy weaponry around Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. According to witnesses, the Ukrainian army resorted to multiple rocket launchers, including Uragan launchers and cruise missiles, RIA Novosti reported citing local militia.
Cruise missiles were spotted flying over the city of Gorlovka on Tuesday, while Uragan launchers were seen near the town of Snezhniy, witnesses told the news agency. Explosions reportedly caused by airstrikes were also heard within the city of Donetsk.
Amid the increased violence, Russia called for an emergency UN Security Council session on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine on Tuesday.
Russia’s UN envoy proposed the deployment of an international humanitarian mission, along with Russian humanitarian aid under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
“We propose to send convoys of Russian humanitarian aid under the auspices of the ICRC, to Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as other towns in Ukraine, where internally displaced persons are concentrated in the eastern regions,” Churkin said.
He noted that eastern Ukrainians urgently require food, medicine, medical equipment, water purification systems, and electricity generators.
“By any human standards, the situation in the east, especially in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, is catastrophic,” Churkin said. “Today with certainty we can and should be talking about a real war – the International Committee of the Red Cross officially acknowledged the internal armed conflict in the east of Ukraine.”
“Artillery, tanks, as well as rockets are used. There is continuing information from locals about the use of phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs,” Churkin added. “There is indiscriminate shelling of housing blocks and critical civilian infrastructure. In many small towns about 80 percent of houses have been destroyed, according to most conservative estimates. More than 600 buildings have fallen.”
Armed thug in Odessa does not bother Ukranian police
There is no evidence of Russia’s involvement in the Friday massacre in Odessa, US Ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt had to admit Sunday as he spoke by telephone on a CNN program.
Friday, May 2, football fans who had come to Odessa from the northeast city of Kharkov as well as the combatants from two far-right extremist organizations, the Right Sector and the Maidan Self-Defense Force clashed with the supporters of federalization of Ukraine in downtown Odessa.
They set fire to the regional House of the Trade Unions and a tent camp near it where activists had been gathering signatures in favor of a referendum for federalization of Ukraine and for granting Russian the status of a second state language.
As a result of the tragic events, 46 people died and more than 200 survivors had to turn for medical aid.
“We don’t have evidence of the Russian role in […] the tragedy that transpired on Friday,” Pyatt said answering the anchor Candy Crowley’s downright aggressive question on whether he believed that Russia was behind “this bloodiest day thus far in this back-and-forth [the course of the Ukrainian crisis]”.
Pyatt mentioned the blunt accusations towards Russia that the prime minister of the incumbent Kiev government, Arseny Yatsenyuk, had made in Odessa earlier in the day.
“And this is something that we hope an impartial and systematic investigation will be able to get to the bottom of very quickly,” he said.
Pyatt indicated that he could not understand clearly why the Friday massacre had taken place.
“[…] having spent some time in Odessa just three weeks ago and spoken with a broad range of political and civil society leaders, there’s nothing that I heard and saw while I was in that city which would explain what transpired on Friday night,” Pyatt indicated.
“At this point, the whole country is trying to figure out what happened, how to pull together, and how to make sure that those who are trying to divide the country will not be successful,” he said.
“Most disturbingly, there seems to be evidence in social media that some of the police in Odessa may have been complicit in allowing the violence to explode out of control way it did.”
A private military company is in charge of suppressing protest movements in Eastern Ukraine, said a source in the country’s Security Service. According to him, the name of the company is Greystone Limited.
According to a source cited by ITAR-TASS, Ukrainian authorities believe that the Security Service is not able to suppress the protest mood and neutralize the leaders and activists of the pro-Russian movement in the eastern regions. In particular, the source said, the acting president Alexander Turchinov shares this opinion.
“Therefore it was decided to attract foreign mercenaries, who will serve as political police and state security protection, ” said the representative of the Security Service.
He informed that the initiative to attract mercenaries belongs to oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Sergei Taruta, appointed governors of Dnepropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.
Self-defense forces in the anti-Kiev stronghold of Slavyansk are Ukrainians, not Russians, who distrust the new regime and the Western powers that support it, New York Times reporters have discovered. The forces also said they are not being paid to fight.
Source: VoR/RT
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