A security consultant who worked with the news agency
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Reuters died and Two other employees were injured in the bombing of the hotel where they were staying in Kramatosk, town in eastern Ukraine, the company announced on Sunday.
The adviser “was part of a Reuters team staying at the Sapphire Hotel in Kramatorsk” […] when he was hit by a missile,” he announced.
Reuters in a statement on X, adding that it was “devastated” by the news.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the bombing. “The world must not stop putting pressure on the terrorist state,” he said, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Six Reuters employees were staying at the hotel. Two of them were injured in the attack, one seriously, and were taken to hospital, the agency said. Three others were in good condition, it said.
Vadim Filashkin, the governor of the eastern Donetsk region where most of the fighting has taken place since the start of the war, confirmed the Russian attack on the hotel in the early hours of Sunday.
“We are urgently seeking more information, cooperating with the authorities in Kramatorsk and offering our support to our colleagues and their families,” the news agency added.
According to Filashkin, the victims are “citizens of Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom.” The attack, which damaged the Sapphire Hotel and a neighboring building, took place “in the middle of the night,” he wrote on Telegram.
Kramatorsk is the last major city in Donbas under Ukrainian control and is located about 20 kilometers west of the front line. The city often serves as a base for humanitarian workers and foreign journalists.
Reuters said the aide who died had “helped keep many of our journalists safe as they covered events around the world. He was a beloved colleague and friend, and we will miss him terribly.”
Strategic city
The city, which had 150,000 inhabitants before the war, has been the target of repeated Russian attacks since the start of the invasion.
Its train station was hit by a bombing in April 2022, killing more than 60 people. In June 2023, another bombing of a restaurant left 13 people dead.
Fourteen people have also been killed in Russian airstrikes elsewhere in Ukraine in the past 24 hours, seven in the Donetsk region and four in the northern Sumi region, according to local authorities.
In the southern Kherson region, three people were killed and six injured, including a one-year-old child, according to Ukrainian police.
“The Russian military fired at residential areas in the Kherson region using multiple rocket launchers, artillery, aircraft and drones,” he said on Telegram. The shelling left at least 34 people injured.
On the Russian side, six people were killed in Ukrainian shelling in the Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced. He said 13 others were injured, six of whom are in “serious” condition, including a 16-year-old girl in intensive care.
Kursk Region Governor Alexei Smirnov announced that four Ukrainian missiles had been shot down on Saturday. Ukrainian troops launched a major offensive in the region on August 6.
On Sunday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed “breakthroughs” in Kursk and the capture of two towns. At the same time, Ukraine accused its neighbour Belarus, an ally of Moscow, of “concentrating” troops on its border and warned Minsk that it should avoid “unfriendly actions”.
At least 11 journalists have been killed in Ukraine and 35 injured since the start of the invasion, according to the NGO Reporters Without Borders. AFP’s video coordinator in Ukraine, Arman Soldin, was killed on May 9, 2023, at the age of 32, in a rocket attack in Chasiv Yar, near the front line in the Donetsk region.
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