(Reuters) – Three ambulance workers trying to evacuate people from their homes in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine were killed by Ukrainian shelling on Thursday, a Russian-installed official in the region said.
The medical team had gone in to rescue civilians after a first wave of Ukrainian shelling when Kyiv’s forces started firing again and they were hit, Russian news agency TASS reported, saying a number of other medical workers had been injured in the same attack.
Dmitry Gartsev, the Russian-installed head of the local health ministry, said on his Telegram channel that doctors were fighting to save the life of a fourth ambulance worker.
Reuters could not verify the fatalities. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities, who say Russian forces have killed thousands of people in similar attacks on civilian areas and that their own armed forces are trying to seize back control of Ukrainian territory.
Moscow, which says it does not deliberately target civilians, is trying to take control of all of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a big chunk of which it has already seized, and is facing fierce resistance from the Ukrainian army.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
