On the afternoon of 19 February 2023, the Ukrainian army fired 20 Grad rockets into the centre of Donetsk, and a further 20 into the Kievski district, killing one civilian and injuring 11 others, including a 9-year-old girl. Many civilian homes and infrastructure were also damaged.
It was just after 3pm when the Ukrainian army fired 20 rockets from a 122mm Grad multiple rocket launcher into the Kievski district in the northern part of Donetsk. The Ukrainian soldiers immediately followed up with another 20 Grad rockets fired at the city centre.
These 40 Grad rockets hit exclusively residential areas of Donetsk, where there are no military targets. One civilian was seriously injured and died in hospital. Eleven other civilians, including a nine-year-old girl and a 17-year-old man, were also wounded in the Ukrainian army's terrorist bombardment.
Many houses were damaged in the Ukrainian army's Grad shelling, as well as the Olimpiski stadium, the Krupskaya library, the Heroes' Alley, where busts of DPR commanders killed in action or murdered by Kiev are located, a kindergarten, a school, several buildings of the Donetsk National Technical University, the central market, the nearby bus station, and many shops.
See my report filmed at several of the affected locations:
Other images taken by colleagues from different media and the JCCC (Joint Monitoring and Coordination Centre for War Crimes in Ukraine):
The directions of Tonenkoye and Avdeyevka, calculated by the CCCC, correspond to the two impacts I found in Heroes' Alley and near the central market in Donetsk. In both cases, the shape of the crater, or the direction indicated by the rocket still planted in the ground, indicates a strike from the north-west, the location of Ukrainian positions in the Avdeyevka area!
The areas targeted by the Ukrainian army in this Grad bombing of Donetsk are purely residential. There are no military targets in the affected areas. Unless perhaps Ukraine considers the books in Russian and by Russian authors that the Krupskaya library contains as weapons...