Smoke rises from gutted homes after Russia shelling kills one in Pokrovsk, Ukraine

By Max Hunder

POKROVSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Russian shelling of a residential area killed one person and injured two on Saturday in this strategic logistical hub in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the regional governor said.

“The Russians hit civilians on purpose and regularly,” Vadym Filashkin, the Donetsk regional governor, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Don’t risk your life! Evacuate!”

Twenty-nine months into its full-scale invasion, with Kyiv’s forces stretched thin, Russia has been steadily inching forward on several fronts in Donetsk, staging particularly fierce attacks near Pokrovsk.

Reuters witnesses saw a helmet lying beside a pool of blood and a moped 10 meters (yards) from a crater a meter wide in the middle of a residential street.

Smoke rose from the burnt-out remains of one house leveled in the afternoon strike and a second building across the street that had been gutted by fire.

“Our windows shattered and we ran out,” said Maryna, 39, who recounted how she fled her now destroyed home with her husband. The blast also wrecked their two cars, one of which was thrown several meters.

Rescue workers were still dousing the flames as dazed residents looked on two hours after the impact, which police at the scene blamed on a UMPB D-30 glide bomb.

(Writing by Elaine Monaghan in Bloomington; editing by Giles Elgood)