(Reuters) – Ukraine’s forces shelled on New Year’s Eve the city of Makiivka and other places of the Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk region, Russia’s officials said, with reports saying that a military quarters were hit, killing many.
The Moscow-installed administration of the Donetsk region in Ukraine said on Sunday that at least 25 rockets were fired at the region overnight on New Year’s Eve.
Russia’s TASS state news agency cited local Moscow-installed officials as saying that at least 15 people were injured in Makiivka, a major coal producing centre, in a series of shelling with High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) rockets.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports.
The Russian Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. In its daily report on Sunday, it said that it had destroyed seven HIMARS rockets, including in the area of Makiivka.
Daniil Bezsonov, a senior Russian-backed official in the Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk region, said that there was a strike on a vocational school, which according to preliminary information served as military personnel quarters.
The attack, Bezsonov said, happened two minutes after midnight on New Year’s Day.
“A massive blow was dealt to the vocational school from American MLRS HIMARS. There were dead and wounded, the exact number is still unknown,” Bezsonov said on the Telegram messaging app. “The building itself was badly damaged.”
(Reporting by Felix Light, Ron Popeski, Maria Starkova and Lidia Kelly; Writing by Lidia Kelly and Ron Popeski; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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