DONETSK (Sputnik) – A powerful explosion has occurred at a chemical factory in the city of Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine as a result of artillery shelling by Kiev forces, Ukrainian officials have informed on their social network accounts.
Borys Filatov, former deputy governor of Dnipropetrovsk, and current member of the Ukrainian parliament, Verkhovna Rada, wrote on Facebook that the same "heroes" who had cut the "aviation of LPR [self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic]" have shelled Donetsk from the Smerch rocket launchers.
Meanwhile, Konstantin Dolgoff, co-chairman of the People's Front of Novorossiya (united front established last spring by the self-proclaimed people's republics in Ukraine's southeast) said on his Facebook page that the explosion occurred at a chemical plant in Donetsk.
The plant had already been targeted by shelling, in September and November of last year.
Fighting between Kiev forces and independence supporters continues in Ukraine's southeast, despite the truce reached at a meeting in the Belarusian capital Minsk in September. Clashes between the two sides intensified at the start of this year.
Donetsk is one of the hot spots of violence, which started last spring, when Kiev launched a military operation against residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions who refused to recognize the new coup-installed government.
