Ukraine: Red Cross Humanitarian Aid Worker Killed in Donetsk Mortar Attack

A foreign Red Cross worker has been killed in Donetsk, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed.

The humanitarian worker, identified as Laurent Etienne, died when the office of the ICRC in Donetsk was shelled. Etienne was deputy head of the Red Cross mission in Donetsk.

Eduard Basurin, head of the DPR Defense Ministry's political department, told TASS news agency: "A Red Cross representative, Laurent Etienne, a citizen of Switzerland, born 1976, has been killed."

The City Council confirmed the shelling on its website, adding that emergency services were deployed to the site.

"We can confirm that a mortar hit a nine-storey block of flats in Universitetskaya Street,"

Several blasts were heard in the centre of Donetsk as it was subjected to heavy shelling by the self-propelled multiple rocket launcher system BM-27 Uragan

Among the areas that were hit by mortar fire were a hospital, a shopping centre, dormitories for displaced people from Eastern Ukraine and returned POWs.

On Wednesday (1 October), three people died at a school on the first day of school in the country. Six others were killed at a bus stop.

Ukraine has been engulfed in a violent internal conflict since mid-April, when Kiev began its military operation against independence supporters in the south-eastern regions of the country.

According to the UN, the conflict has so far claimed the lives of more than 3,500 people.