According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a strike in eastern Ukraine has resulted in the deaths of three of its employees and the injuries of two more.
The International Committee of the Red Cross declared it “unconscionable” that “shelling would hit an aid distribution site,” but they withheld the attacker’s identity.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that the dead were Ukrainian and that Moscow was responsible for the shelling, calling it “another Russian war crime.”
The group claims that its vehicles are frequently utilized and conspicuously exhibited in the frontline region of Donetsk.
Mirjana Spoljaric, the organization’s president, declared: “I vehemently denounce acts of violence against Red Cross workers. We are grieving the loss of our colleagues and providing care for the injured today, and it breaks our hearts.”
According to the ICRC, when it was struck, its team was getting ready to deliver coal briquettes and wood to homes in the Viroliubivka village, which is located north of Donetsk city.
According to the agency, no residents were impacted by the explosion, and the distribution of the goods had not yet started.
It did not corroborate any information regarding the victims’ identities.
Workers in Viroliubivka were reportedly unloading supplies when the attack occurred, according to earlier reports from Ukrainian officials about shelling.
The leader of Ukraine attributed the attack on social media to a Russian strike. Zelensky posted a picture of a burning white truck with the Red Cross emblem on the side.
He declared, “The International Committee of the Red Cross’s humanitarian mission’s vehicles were attacked by the occupier today.”
Online remarks by Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Ombudsman, urged the Red Cross to openly link the attack to Russia.
He wrote, “The ICRC should not speak about the shelling, even though it is already known about.”
Reiterating its status as a “neutral, impartial, and independent organization with an exclusively humanitarian mandate,” the ICRC made this declaration in its statement.
It bemoaned the “sharp rise” in humanitarian deaths worldwide during the previous 24 months.
Similar cautions have also been issued by the UN. According to AFP news, during its humanitarian mission to Ukraine earlier this year, 50 workers were killed or injured in Ukraine in 2023, with 11 of them dying in the line of duty.
