DONETSK, July 23. /ITAR-TASS/. Seven people have been injured in Ukraine’s city of Donetsk over the past 24 hours as fighting and shelling continued in the outskirts, the Donetsk regional administration said on Wednesday.
According to the local health authorities, another four people were injured in the town of Horlivka. Casualties have been reported in other settlements, including Shakhtyorsk, Snezhnoye and Starobelsk.
A total of 432 people, including 36 women and 6 children, have died in the Donetsk region since the military operation started in April. Another 1,015 people have been injured.
Last night was extremely bad in Donetsk. The whole city heard shots and explosions coming from the outskirts. Local residents noted separate skirmishes in several city neighborhoods.
An artillery strike set the Donetsk chemical plant on fire. Firefighters extinguished the fire only by morning.
Three high-voltage power lines have been damaged and the work of a number of facilities affiliated with the Donetsk regional electricity company (Donetskoblenergo) has been disrupted, the press service of the Donetsk regional state administration said. As a result, the Donetsk filter station was left without electricity, and the supply of water to consumers was, consequently, reduced to the minimum in the Kirovsky, Kuibyshevsky and Leninsky districts.
According to Igor Strelkov, the defense minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Ukrainian army broke the blockade around the Donetsk airport and fought its way to the city’s north-western outskirts.
The press center of the Kiev-led military operation said, in turn, that the militias “were retreating to the central part of Donetsk.” However, they were still in control of Luhansk, Avdeyevka, Horlivka, Donetsk and some sections of Ukraine’s state border in the vicinity of Uspenka, Marinovka and Dyakovo villages.