BAKHMUT, Ukraine — At least four civilians were killed in the frontline city of Avdiyivka some 700 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, after the city was massively shelled by Russian-backed separatists at 7 p.m. local time, Ukraine’s National Police reported on May 13.
Reports on social networks said that a private house was destroyed with a direct hit that immediately killed four people, leaving two female children without parents. Authorities said the girls had been taken under police protection.
Social media users claiming to be in the separatist-occupied city of Makiyivka wrote that they heard the Russian-backed militant forces firing artillery rounds against Avdiyivka from a position at the Lisne cemetery.
One of Avdiyivka’s schools and a kindergarten are also reported to have been caught up in the attack, as were passengers on a train located near the city’s railway station.
The governor of the Donetsk Oblast, Pavlo Zhebrivsky, has said that among those killed there were three women and a man. One other person was taken to hospital wounded.
An investigation in the artillery shelling, the first such attack in several weeks, has been launched.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko asserted that due to the massive shelling in Avdiyivka he cancelled his visit to the Eurovision 2017 Song Contest final which took place on May 13 in Kyiv.
At least 35 civilians have been killed and more than 156 wounded in the Donbas war zone in 2017 according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
