KIEV, August 04. /ITAR-TASS/. A third clergyman has been killed by the continuing fighting in the east of Ukraine, the Severodonetsk diocese said on Monday.

This is a second death of a clergyman over the past week. On July 31, an archpriest was killed by a shell fragment on his way home from church service. Prior to that, another priest was killed on July 28. A similar incident occurred on May 9 in the Donetsk region.

Over the past month, Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev has twice asked Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to stop attacks on churches and the clergy by government troops.

On August 1, experts from the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies published statistics, based on Ukrainian and Russian media reports, which indicated that churches and clergymen in Ukraine had been attacked 62 times since the beginning of the year.