DONETSK, May 20. /TASS/. A militiaman of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) was killed when Kiev government troops shelled the DPR territory earlier in the day, a spokesman for the DPR operations command, Eduard Basurin, said on Saturday.
"One DPR serviceman was killed while protecting civilians," the Donetsk News Agency quoted him as saying.
The DPR mission to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) earlier said that 24 ceasefire violations were recorded in the past day, with about 700 projectiles launched toward the self-proclaimed republic’s territory. Four houses in Gorlovka and one house in Donetsk were damaged as a result.
On Friday, the JCCC reported on Friday that a woman was killed in shelling.
On the initiative of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the so-called Easter ceasefire came into effect in the Donbass area from March 30. However, as was the case with the previous ceasefire, the shelling attacks did not fully stop and the sides accused each other of truce violations already in the morning of March 30.
Earlier, Basurin said that some 200 ceasefire violations by Ukrainian troops had been reported this week.