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250 civilian persons killed in Luhansk region of Ukraine since beginning of summer - OSCE

The monitors said that “the situation in parts of Luhansk and Donetsk regions remained tense with on-going fighting around the city of Luhansk”

VIENNA, July 19 /ITAR-TASS/. Some 250 civilian persons have been killed and 850 wounded in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region in June and July 2014, the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in a daily report from Ukraine on Saturday, July 19.

“The doctors said that in June and July alone there were 250 killed and 850 wounded in the Luhansk region,” the report said.

In addition, the doctors informed that on July 16 alone three persons were killed and 30 were wounded in Luhansk.

“This last number does not include civilians killed in close vicinity of combat zones outside of the city and causalities among combatants. They also claimed that increasingly more people were being killed by booby traps and mines,” the report said.

The monitors said that “the situation in parts of Luhansk and Donetsk regions remained tense with on-going fighting around the city of Luhansk”.

“While patrolling the city centre of Lugansk, close to the occupied building of the Regional Administration, the SMM heard the sound of a shell hitting a garage, located about 200 metres away. Within two minutes the SMM arrived at the scene and found one man killed lying on the pavement; the garage and a car were totally demolished,” the report said.

The Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine currently consists of 300 civilian unarmed monitors from more than 40 OSCE participating States and local staff from Ukraine.

The Mission’s Head Office is in Kiev and there are monitors working in Kherson, Odessa, Lvov, Ivano-Frankovsk, Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Chernovtsy and Lugansk regions.