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UN experts visit the site in Donbass where a child was killed - OHCHR spokesperson

The situation in Donbass worsened at the end of February, with fire exchanges involving the use of mortars and grenade launchers registered every day

GENEVA, April 8./TASS/. Experts from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission have visited the site where a five-year-old child died in the settlement of Aleksandrovskoye in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

"At this stage, we can only confirm that he died because of combined blast trauma and fragmentation injuries," UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Liz Throssell told TASS on Thursday.

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Moscow’s bid to make Donbass talks transparent evokes dread in Kiev, says Russian official

"Information collected during the visit will inform further our analysis of the exact cause of the boy’s death," she said. "Yes, colleagues from the Donetsk office of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission today visited the location of the incident in the village of Oleksandrivske," she confirmed on Thursday.

The DPR reported earlier that a child was killed in the Donetsk People’s Republic in a Ukrainian drone strike on April 2. According to the DPR defense agency, Ukrainian troops dropped an explosive device from an unmanned aerial vehicle onto an inhabited locality in the DPR. The boy’s 67-year-old grandma survived with fragmentation wounds and brain concussion.

Situation in Donbass

The situation in Donbass worsened at the end of February, with fire exchanges involving the use of mortars and grenade launchers registered every day. The conflicting sides blamed the aggravation of the situation on each other.

The situation became the subject of a livestream video discussion among the political advisors to the Normandy Four leaders on March 18. According to a source in the Russian delegation who spoke to TASS, the necessity for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry to publish the relevant decree on the armed forces, which would include a complete list of obligations of both sides was discussed. The Donbass republics issued such decrees and published them immediately after the agreement was signed. On the contrary, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in its July 27, 2020 statement, added a provision to the permission to open fire "in case the safety of Ukrainian servicemen is threatened," thereby nullifying the entire ceasefire mechanism.

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