Two journalists injured and one missing in a bomb explosion at a hotel in Kramatorsk

Two employees of the Reuters news agency were injured and a third is missing after a hotel was bombed in Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine, the company and local authorities reported this Sunday.

This was confirmed by Vadim Filyashkin, the governor of the eastern Donetsk region, where most of the fighting has been taking place since the Russian invasion of February 2022. Russian attack on hotel in the early hours of Sunday.

“One of our colleagues is missing and two others have been taken to hospital for treatment,” he said in a statement, quoted by Reuters agency. He added that his three other employees were staying at a hotel and were fine.

“We are urgently seeking more information, cooperating with the Kramatorsk authorities and offering our support to our colleagues and their families,” the news agency said.

According to Filashkin, the victims are “citizens of Ukraine, the United States and the United Kingdom.” The attack, which damaged the Sapphire Hotel and a neighboring building, occurred “in the middle of the night,” he wrote on Telegram.

“Police and rescue teams are working at the spot. The debris is being removed and rescue operations are underway,” he said.

AFP journalists in Kramatorsk saw rescue workers searching through the rubble of the building with torches. They found that rescue services were still working at the scene well into the morning.

– Strategic City –

Kramatorsk is the last major city in Donbass under Ukrainian control and is about 20 kilometres west of the front line.

The city, which had 150,000 inhabitants before the war, has been the target of repeated Russian attacks since the start of the invasion.

A bomb exploded at its railway station in April 2022 killing over 60 people. In June 2023, another bombing against a restaurant killed 13 people.

Eleven people were also killed in Russian bombing in other parts of Ukraine over the past 24 hours. Seven in the Donetsk region and four in the Sumy region in the north, according to local officials. They said at least 28 people were injured in the bombings.

According to Ukrainian police, three people were killed and six injured in the southern Kherson region, including a one-year-old child. “Russian forces fired on residential areas in the Kherson region using multiple rocket launchers, artillery, aircraft and drones,” they said on Telegram.

Vyacheslav Gladkov announced that on the Russian side, six people were killed in Ukrainian shelling in the Belgorod region.

According to him, 13 others were injured, six of them “serious”, including a 16-year-old girl in intensive care.

Kursk region governor Alexei Smirnov in turn announced that four Ukrainian missiles were shot down on Saturday.

Ukrainian troops launched a major offensive in the region on 6 August.

At least 11 journalists have been killed and 35 injured in Ukraine since the start of the invasion, according to the NGO Reporters Without Borders.

AFP Ukraine video coordinator Arman Soldin died on May 9, 2023, at the age of 32 in a rocket attack in Chasiv Yar near the front line in the Donetsk region.