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Developments in eastern Ukraine

Russian human rights advocate says he witnessed shelling of dwelling area in Donetsk

MOSCOW, September 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Maxim Shevchenko, a member of the Russian president’s human rights council, told ITAR-TASS on Sunday he had witnessed mortar shelling of a residential area in east Ukraine’s Donetsk.

“It is a violation of ceasefire regime by Kiev and it is a war crime. I will report about it to the council’s chairman and the Russian president at a meeting due in October,” he said.

“I was in Donetsk to establish partner relations with human rights organizations. We were riding in a car marked by the PRESS sign. We were accompanied by a police car, when Donetsk’s Kievsky district we were driving through came under shelling from a mortar,” Shevchenko said. “It is a densely populated area with no military facilities, no armed people but for police officers.”

He said that a policeman who was accompanying him and a group of journalists and a number of civilians had been killed by shells. “In a cellar we reached to find shelter from shelling, I saw only civilians,” he noted.

Shevchenko also said he had met with Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Alexander Zakharcgenko to agree to establish a position of a human rights ombudsman in the republic. “The human right ombudsman will monitor situations like this and report such information to international organizations that are to press Kiev for stopping terror against civilians,” he added.

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Eastern Ukraine

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