Reuters :
Twenty-five people were killed and 20 injured after 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.
According to Alexei Kulemzin, the city’s Russian-installed mayor, Ukrainian forces shelled a busy area where shops and a market are located.
Pushilin said the city was shelled by Ukrainian artillery. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Reuters photographs and video taken at the scene showed crying people, some who said they had lost their relatives, and bodies lying on blood-soaked snow near one of the city’s markets.
Pushilin said emergency services were working at the scene and that forensic specialists were trying to collect fragments of the weapons used in the attack.
Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions which Russia claimed to have annexed last year in a move condemned as illegal by most countries at the United Nations General Assembly. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions.
Also Sunday, fire broke out at a chemical transport terminal at Russia’s Ust-Luga port following two explosions, regional officials said. Local media reported that the port had been attacked by Ukrainian drones, causing a gas tank to explode.
The blaze was at a site run by Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer, Novatek, 165 kilometers southwest of St. Petersburg.
In a press statement to Russian media outlet RBC, the company said that the fire was the result of an “external influence.” It also said that it had paused operations at the port.
Yuri Zapalatsky, the head of Russia’s Kingisepp district, where the port is based, said in a statement that there were no casualties, but that the area had been placed on high alert.
News outlet Fontanka reported that two drones had been detected flying towards St Petersburg Sunday morning, but that they were redirected towards the Kingisepp district. The Associated Press could not independently verify the reports.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not report any drone activity in the Kingisepp area in its daily briefing. It said that four Ukrainian drones had been downed in Russia’s Smolensk region, and that two more had been shot down in the Oryol and Tula regions.
Russian officials previously confirmed that a Ukrainian drone had been downed on the outskirts of St. Petersburg on Thursday.