On the 750th day of the war, three children were killed in a strike in Donetsk, a city in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian forces, its pro-Russian mayor Alexei Koulemzin said on Friday.
“As a result of a barbaric nighttime strike in the Petrovsky district of our city by Ukrainian Nazis,” a house was targeted and caught fire, Alexei Kulemzin wrote on Telegram.
“Three children were killed,” he said, specifying that the victims were a 17-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl.
The head of the Donetsk Republic, the pro-Russian Denis Pushilin, reported two deaths, a boy and a girl, saying that searches were continuing in the rubble.
The Russian news agency RIA Novosti says that Ukrainian forces fired eleven 155 mm caliber shells into this part of the city on Thursday.
The Petrovsky district which was hit by the Ukrainian army is located on the western outskirts of Donetsk.
Since 2014, and the latent conflict between separatists supported by Russia and Ukraine, the region has regularly seen exchanges of fire.
As the crow flies, the regional capital is only about ten kilometers from Avdiivka, which Ukrainian forces had to cede to the Russians in mid-February, after months of fighting.
Kremlin troops also claimed earlier this week the capture of a village in the area.
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This incident comes as Russia began voting this Friday for the presidential election which lasts three days, until Sunday, and which must renew Vladimir Putin for a new six-year term in the absence of any opposition .
The vote is also being organized in four Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia in 2022 and which it only partially controls: Zaporizhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk.
Ukrainian diplomacy, however, called for rejecting the result of this vote, which it describes as a “farce”.
As the presidential election approaches, attacks from Ukraine have increased against Russian territory, causing deaths and injuries and targeting several energy sites.