Russian shelling left at least five people dead in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Saturday. Three men aged between 24 and 69 were killed and four injured in the town of Kostyantynivka, Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin said, according to a Reuters report. He added that two men in their 50s were also killed in shelling near the town of Toretsk.
In a Telegram post, Filashkin said a multi-storey block, an administrative building and a shop were damaged in the Kostyantynivka attack.
Three people suffered minor injuries and received medical treatment, Filashkin said, as reported by Reuters. Anastasiia Medvedeva, a spokesperson for the Donetsk prosecutor’s office, told public broadcaster Suspilne that the fourth injured person was a 57-year-old woman who suffered a shrapnel wound and a head injury.
As per Reuters, Kostyantynivka was an industrial town with a population of 70,000 before the war. Many residents have, however, left the town as the frontline moved closer through the 30-month Russian invasion. It has been hit regularly by missiles, bombs and artillery. In August, the authorities in Ukraine announced a compulsory evacuation of families with children from the area due to the dangers posed by Russia’s advances.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, three people in Belgorod, Russia, were injured after Ukrainian shells hit the town of Shebekino, Reuters reported.
“Ambulance crews brought a woman in serious condition with shrapnel wounds to the back and thigh and a man with a shrapnel wound to the chest to the regional clinical hospital,” the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram, as per Reuters.
The third person was taken to hospital with a shrapnel wound to the thigh. The governor also mentioned the infrastructure damaged, and said two houses and four outbuildings had caught fire.
As per a Reuters report, Belgorod has come under frequent shelling and drone attacks from Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The region is next to Kursk, a massive part of which was occupied by Ukrainian forces following an attack last month.