Ukrainian military kill children while they play football at school

On November 5th, the Ukrainian artillery in the southeast of Ukraine violated ceasefire regime 18 times, the press center of the militia forces said. As a result of the shelling, two teenagers were killed and four others were wounded in Donetsk. The children were playing football in the school yard, when Ukrainian shells exploded there.

Two 120-mm shells exploded on a school stadium with a difference of a few seconds. The first one struck the school building, while the second damaged the football field. There were nine teenagers playing on the school stadium at the time of the shelling. Only three of them were lucky to avoid injuries. Two died on the spot - a school graduate and an eighth-grader; four were wounded.

Donetsk is mourning the killed children on November 6 and 7, the head of the government of the People's Republic of Donetsk, Alexander Zakharchenko said.

Seventeen-year-old Vitali is one of the wounded children. The explosions injured his legs and the groin.

School No. 63 in the Kuibyshev district of Donetsk is a modern, recently built building. The school is located near the railway station and the airport of Donetsk. However, the school had not been damaged during the fighting before. Children would often go to the stadium to play football. The day before, the Ukrainian military shelled the entire neighborhood near the school. Four shells at once struck a residential building located nearby.

Two of the four injured teenagers are still in intensive care; doctors say their lives are out of danger.

A surgeon, who operated the injured children, said that the patients had severe shrapnel wounds.

Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry demanded independent investigation should be conducted into the tragedy in Donetsk, Russia 24 TV Channel reports. Commissioner of the Ministry of Human Rights, Konstantin Dolgov, wrote on his page: "The killing of children is a grave crime! Perpetrators must be severely punished!"

Children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov, in turn, expressed his condolences to the families of the victims. According to him, Kiev is running an inhumane policy in Donbass. The Ukrainian military have repeatedly violated ceasefire regime in the south-east. Astakhov demanded full and impartial investigation be conducted into the schoolchildren's deaths.

Russia's Investigative Committee opened a criminal case into the shelling of the school in Donetsk, were the schoolchildren were killed. The case was qualified as an international crime, TASS reports.

According to Vladimir Markin, an official spokesman for the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, "the IC Central Directorate filed a criminal case into the shelling of the school in the city of Donetsk in accordance with Part 2 of Article 105, Paragraph 1 of Article 356 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - murder committed in aggravating circumstances; the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare."

The case was connected with the main criminal case about the use of prohibited means, methods of warfare, as well as genocide of civilians living in the breakaway People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

"According to investigators, on November 5, at about 5 p.m., armed forces of Ukraine and the National Guard, following orders from commanders and officials of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine, conducted artillery bombardment of School No. 63 located on  Stepanenko Street in Donetsk. Two minors were killed and three local people suffered injuries of varying severity as a result of the attack," said Markin.

"As suggested by investigation, the above-mentioned officials conducted the ​​artillery bombardment of the school building to destroy a national group of Russian-speaking population living on the territory of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk. This came in violation of a number of international conventions, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the protocol on the termination of the use of weapons in the south-east of Ukraine that was signed in Minsk in September," said Markin.