Civilian death toll mounts amid shelling
RUSSIAN shelling has killed at least 12 civilians in Ukraine over the past 24 hours and wounded 25 more, Ukrainian officials said.
Meanwhile, Pro-Russia separatists said attacks by Ukrainian forces have killed four civilians.
The Ukrainian presidential office said Russian forces targeted cities and villages in the country’s south east, with most civilian casualties occurring in Donetsk province, where Russia has stepped up its offensive in recent days.
Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said in a Telegram post that two people died in the city of Avdiivka, which is located in the centre of the province, and the Donetsk cities of Sloviansk, Krasnohorivka and Kurakhove each reported one civilian killed.
“Every crime will be punished,” he wrote.
Mr Kyrylenko urged the province’s more than 350,000 remaining residents to flee late on Tuesday, saying that evacuating Donetsk is necessary to save lives and allow the Ukrainian army to put up a better defence against the Russian advance.
Donetsk is part of the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking industrial area where Ukraine’s most experienced soldiers are concentrated.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday declared the complete seizure of the region’s other province, Luhansk, after Ukrainian troops withdrew from the last city under their control.
Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai yesterday denied that the Russians had completely captured the province.
Heavy fighting continued in villages around Lysychansk, the city Ukrainian soldiers withdrew from and which Russian troops took on Sunday, he said.
“The Russians have paid a high price, but the Luhansk region is not fully captured by the Russian army,” Mr Haidai said.
“Some settlements have been overrun by each side several times already.”
He accused Russian forces of scorched-earth tactics, “burning down and destroying everything on their way”.
Up to 15,000 residents remain in Lysychansk and some 8,000 in the nearby city of Sievierodonetsk, which Russian and separatist fighters seized last month, Mr Haidai said.
Pro-Russian separatists have fought Ukrainian forces and controlled much of the Donbas for eight years.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Mr Putin recognised the independence of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the region.
Separatist authorities in Donetsk said yesterday that four civilians had been killed and another 14 wounded in Ukrainian shelling over the past 24 hours.
News reports said shelling hit an ammunition depot on Tuesday, triggering massive explosions.
Since Russian forces failed to make inroads in capturing Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Moscow has concentrated its offensive on seizing the remaining Ukrainian-held areas of the Donbas.
To the north of Donetsk, Russian forces also hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s secondlargest city, with missile strikes overnight, the Kharkiv regional governor said yesterday on Telegram.
Three districts of the city were targeted, governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Three people, including a toddler, sustained injuries, said the governor.
A missile struck a building where military registration takes place.
A government building next door remained intact.
Closer to the front line and in a more abandoned district of the city, first responders crunched through the debris of another overnight attack at the national teaching university in Kharkiv.
Pages of dusty textbooks flapped in the breeze.