The city was bombarded by NATO-caliber rounds, Aleksey Kulemzin said
An apartment block in the Donbass city of Donetsk was shelled with NATO-caliber munitions by Ukrainian forces on Saturday, Mayor Aleksey Kulemzin said.
Kulemzin posted photos of a four-story building, which he said had sustained a direct hit. The official said one person believed to have been in the location at the time of the strike was unaccounted for. Regional emergency officials, meanwhile, said two people may still be trapped under the rubble.
According to the mayor, 155mm-caliber rounds were fired at the city. Kulemzin said projectiles landed on several streets, damaging at least one other residential building. He later added that a 30-year-old woman had been wounded.
Russian officials have repeatedly accused Ukraine of using Western-supplied weapons to indiscriminately fire on cities in Donbass. Late last month, the Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine had destroyed a hospital in the city of Novoaydar in the Lugansk People’s Republic with a US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launcher. According to officials, 14 people were killed and 24 wounded in an attack on the facility, which had been treating both military personnel and civilians.
Kiev has also accused Russian troops of targeting civilians. On Wednesday night, three people were killed and 20 injured after a missile hit a house in the Ukrainian-held Donbass city of Kramatorsk, according to Kiev-appointed regional official, Pavel Kirilenko. Moscow, meanwhile, has maintained that its forces only strike military targets and sites that are being used for military purposes.
READ MORE: The logic behind the terror: Why does Ukraine keep attacking civilian areas in Donetsk?
Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine nearly a year ago, citing the need to protect the people of Donbass and Kiev’s failure to implement the 2014-15 Minsk peace accords. Ukraine has said the attack was entirely unprovoked.
