Russian forces shelled settlements across the Donetsk region 42 times on Wednesday, Oct. 21, prompting local authorities to expand the mandatory evacuation zone for families with children to the entire Sloviansk community.
Head of the Sloviansk City Military Administration Vadym Lyakh announced the decision in a statement on Thursday, Oct. 22, following an order from the Donetsk Regional Military Administration.
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“This is the right and important decision,” he said. “Unfortunately, the security situation in our community keeps getting worse.” He urged parents not to delay leaving, adding that “nothing is more precious than a child’s life and health.”
Children among 8 wounded in Sloviansk
Russian forces repeatedly struck Sloviansk on Wednesday, using guided aerial bombs (KABs) and a first-person-view (FPV) drone. Two boys, aged seven and 12, were among those wounded, Donetsk Regional Governor Vadym Filashkin previously reported.
At the time, he urged families to evacuate to safer parts of Ukraine.
“Children should not pay with their health and lives for adults’ decisions to stay under constant shelling,” he said. “No home and no circumstances are worth a child’s life.”
The attack on the community came around the same time Russian forces used an FPV drone to strike an armored evacuation vehicle of the Proliska Humanitarian Mission near Kramatorsk, also located in the Donetsk region.
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The strike completely destroyed the Swiss-donated vehicle in what marked the 120th time that the humanitarian organization has been attacked since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
In his morning update on Thursday, Filashkin confirmed that eight people in total had been injured over the past day.
The barrage also damaged six apartment buildings, two private homes, an administrative building, a shop, a hotel, a gas station, infrastructure facilities and 11 private vehicles.
2 killed in other parts of the Donetsk region
According to Filashkin, Russian strikes killed one person each in Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka.
Six private houses were also damaged in Kramatorsk, and one person was injured in Raihorodok, in the Mykolaivka community.
In Novodonetske, which suffered the heaviest damage, 23 apartment buildings were targeted. In Oleksandrivka, 18 private homes, an administrative building and an outbuilding were damaged.
The strikes also damaged four private homes in Krynytsi, an apartment building and a private house in Andriivka. Two private vehicles were hit in Ocheretyne, and a private house was struck in Hromova Balka.
Filashkin said that a total of 215 people, including 68 children, were evacuated from frontline areas during the same period.
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