Twenty-seven killed after Ukraine shells Russian-controlled city of Donetsk - officials

People remove debris at a food market following, what local Russian-installed authorities say, was a Ukrainian military strike in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, January 21, 2024. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

(Reuters) -Twenty-seven people were killed and 25 injured when Ukrainian forces shelled the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushilin, the Russian-appointed head of the Donetsk region, said on Sunday.

A man mourns his wife, who was killed while working at a food market following, what local Russian-installed authorities say, was a Ukrainian military strike in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, January 21, 2024. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

According to Alexei Kulemzin, the city’s Russian-installed mayor, Ukrainian forces bombarded a busy area where shops and a market are located. Pushilin said the city was shelled by Ukrainian artillery. There was no immediate Ukrainian comment.

People gather near the body of a victim following, what local Russian-installed authorities say, was a Ukrainian military strike at a food market in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, January 21, 2024. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

Reuters photographs and video taken at the scene showed crying people, some of whom said they had lost relatives, and bodies lying on blood-soaked snow near one of the city’s markets.

Pushilin announced a day of mourning on Monday in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the name given to the part of the region Russia says it has annexed.

He said emergency services were working at the scene and forensic specialists were trying to collect fragments of the weapons used in the attack.

In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the attack “a barbaric act of terrorism” by Ukraine that was carried out “with the use of weapons supplied by the West”.

“The Russian side categorically condemns this treacherous strike against the civilian population,” a ministry statement said.

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, has voiced outrage in the past when Ukrainian attacks have killed civilians in Donetsk and other areas. Russia’s own campaign of air strikes and heavy shelling, however, has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

The governor of the Ukrainian-controlled part of the region, Vadym Filashkin, said Russian attacks killed at least two people at two locations east of the city of Donetsk on Sunday.

A view shows the debris of a food market following, what local Russian-installed authorities say, was a Ukrainian military strike in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, January 21, 2024. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

At Kurakhove, about 45 km (28 miles) west of Donetsk, shelling killed a 31-year-old man and injured another person, while a 62-year-old man was killed and a 70-year-old man injured at Krasnohorivka between Donetsk and Kurakhove, he said.

“I call on everyone who remains in Donetsk: evacuate!” Filashkin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

A woman walks past the body of a victim following, what local Russian-installed authorities say, was a Ukrainian military strike at a food market in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, January 21, 2024. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

Donetsk is one of four regions in Ukraine’s east and south that Russia claimed to have annexed in late 2022 in a move condemned as illegal by most countries at the U.N. General Assembly. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions.

A service member of the Russian armed forces walks past the body of a victim following, what local Russian-installed authorities say, was a Ukrainian military strike at a food market in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, January 21, 2024. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

In three other incidents in the region, Pushilin said, a man born in 1979 was killed and another born in 1957 wounded by shelling, and another four people were injured.

Separately on Sunday, Russia’s defence ministry said Russian forces had taken control of the village of Krokhmalne in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.

A Ukrainian military spokesman confirmed that Kyiv’s forces had withdrawn from the area, but said the lost territory was tiny and of no consequence for the overall military situation.

(Reporting by Reuters; writing by Maxim Rodionov and Elaine Monaghan; editing by Andrew Osborn, Hugh Lawson, Mark Heinrich and Giles Elgood)