Relief truck in flames: Several Red Cross workers killed in Ukraine

Relief truck in flames
Several Red Cross workers killed in Ukraine

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The Red Cross is deeply saddened: “Our hearts are broken,” writes President Mirjana Spoljaric. Three of its employees die after attacks in eastern Ukraine, two others are injured. Russian troops also fire on a grain transport.

Three employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have died in eastern Ukraine after attacks, and two others were injured. “Our hearts are broken as we mourn the loss of our colleagues today,” said ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric. She condemned “the attacks on Red Cross personnel in the strongest possible terms.” It was “unconscionable” for a place where aid supplies were distributed to be shelled.

The distribution of humanitarian goods, including wood and coal for heating in the coming winter, had not yet begun, so no residents were harmed in the explosion. Spoljaric called for compliance with international humanitarian law.

The Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinez announced that the victims were three Ukrainians who had worked for the ICRC. They were killed by artillery fire in the village of Virolyubivka in a heavily contested area near the front line. At the same time, he called on the ICRC on the social network X: “The @ICRC must officially recognize Russia’s violation of the norms of the Geneva Conventions!”

Zelensky: “Russia sows evil

“Another Russian war crime,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram. “Today the occupier attacked the vehicles of the humanitarian mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Donetsk region.”

“Everything is absolutely clear in this war – Russia is sowing evil, Ukraine is defending life,” Zelensky told X. The head of state once again called for a response from states and international organizations to Russia’s violence. “Only together can the world force Russia to end this terror and persuade Moscow to make peace,” he said.

At X, the head of state also announced that Russia had attacked a civilian cargo ship loaded with wheat for Egypt with a missile after it left Ukrainian territorial waters in the Black Sea during the night. There were no casualties. Zelensky once again stressed the importance of Ukrainian grain exports for world food supplies and called for an international response here too. “Wheat and food security should never be missile targets,” he said. The information could not be independently verified.

In the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, the Russian army has been advancing on the logistically important city of Pokrovsk for weeks – despite the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the western Russian region of Kursk, which Ukraine began on August 6. Russia has now begun a counter-offensive in Kursk, as Zelensky announced. The Russian Defense Ministry stated that Russian units of the Northern Troops had “liberated ten towns in two days during offensive operations” in the Russian border region.

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