Heavy Ukrainian shelling of central Donetsk on April 28 killed 9 civilians, including an 8 year old girl, and injured at least 16 more. Most of the dead were burned alive when the minibus they were in was hit by a shell.
Ukraine's shelling targeted a hospital, apartment buildings and houses, parks, streets and sidewalks, all civilian, not military, areas.
According to the DPR Representative Office in the JCCC, Ukraine fired high-explosive fragmentation missiles, “produced in Slovakia and transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries.”
Of Ukraine's first round of shelling yesterday, around 11 am, the JCCC said:
“The enemy fired from their positions located in the area of the settlement. Sergeevka near Krasnoarmeysk, from the M142 HIMARS MLRS using M-31 (fragmentation) missiles exclusively in the residential, central quarter of the city, setting the goal of the maximum number of victims among civilians.”
I was outside of Donetsk interviewing refugees from Artyomovsk when both rounds of intense Ukrainian shelling occurred. I returned to see these catastrophic scenes, sadly ones I've seen many times over in Donetsk under Ukrainian bombing.
I saw similarly horrific scenes last September, also in central Donetsk, also during prime hours of the day, when Ukraine shelled on and around Artema street, the main boulevard running through the city centre, killing four civilians, among them two people burned alive inside a vehicle. Two days later, Ukrainian shelling of the city killed 16 civilians, the horrific sight of the dead etched in my mind, never reported in Western corporate media. Three days after that, Ukraine shelled next the central market, (near the cathedral which Ukraine shelled just weeks ago during Easter mass) killing six civilians there, including two on a minibus.
The areas Ukraine targeted yesterday are all streets and parks I've walked in, including only some days ago. In an instant, they can become sites of carnage, in Ukraine's nine year war on the civilians of the Donbass.
