MOSCOW, January 20 (Sputnik) – Crew of the Rossiya-24 Russian TV channel came under mortar shelling in the center of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
According to the TV channel’s report, the crew went to the Kievsky avenue to check details of mortar shelling of a bus stop. Journalists of Russian and Ukrainian TV channels were at the scene at the moment of the attack.
“We were forced to leave and go to the safe place,” Rossiya-24 correspondent Vitaly Arutyunyan told his colleagues.
The conflict in southeastern Ukraine erupted in mid-April, 2014, when Kiev launched a military operation to suppress independence supporters in Donetsk and Luhansk who refused to recognize the legitimacy of a new government that came to power following a February coup.
On September 5, 2014, the opposing sides reached a ceasefire agreement at a Contact Group meeting in Minsk — however the clashes between them have continued.
According to the latest update by the World Health Organization (WHO), almost 5,000 people have lost their lives and nearly 10,500 have been wounded in Ukraine since the ceasefire between independence supporters and Kiev-led forces was declared.