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Donetsk foreign minister describes oil depot blast as terror attack

A powerful explosion rocked an oil storage facility in Donetsk’s Kirovsky district

DONETSK, September 12. /TASS/. The foreign minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Natalya Nikonorova, described Saturday’s oil storage facility blast in Donetsk as a terror attack.

"Ukrainian armed formations continue to act against all existing peace agreements, the international law and the very notion of humanism: just today, several gunfire provocations and acts of sabotage were carried out," the Donetsk News Agency quoted Nikonorova as saying.

"The Ukrainian side committed a deliberate act of terror, aimed not only at inflicting damage to enterprises and infrastructure of the republic, but also at harming civilians, because a blast and an explosion in the Donetsk area pose a serious threat to civilians nearby," she said. "Let me remind you that using drones to drop explosives is a method <…> widely employed by the Islamic State [outlawed in Russia] and other terrorist groups."

Nikonorova called upon states guarantors of the Minsk agreements and the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe "to use all possible levers in order to press Ukraine to immediately halt the escalation carried out by Kiev."

A powerful explosion rocked an oil storage facility in Donetsk’s Kirovsky district. DPR First Deputy Information Minister Daniil Beznosov said later in the day that Ukrainian drones were spotted near the base on Saturday morning, prompting the evacuation of its personnel. At approximately 12:30 Moscow time, a Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive charge to the facility. The explosion destroyed 1,300 tonnes of oil.

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