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DONETSK, June 26 Ukrainian troops shelled Donetsk and Gorlovka three times in ten minutes, according to the Telegram channel of the DPR representative office in the Joint Center for Control and coordination of issues related to war crimes by Ukraine (JCCC).
According to the department, at 06:15 the Ukrainian Armed Forces opened fire on the Nikitovsky district of Gorlovka.
“Two 155 mm caliber (cassette) shells were fired,” the publication says.
Gorlovka is located 50 kilometers north of Donetsk, where the Stirol chemical concern is located. and coal mining enterprises. This is one of the largest populated areas of the DPR — before the start of the conflict in Donbass, more than 250 thousand people lived in Gorlovka.
At 06:20, the Petrovsky district of Donetsk came under attack — three 155-mm shells were fired at it, and five minutes later — two more cluster shells.
In addition, during the night, Ukrainian troops shelled the Petrovsky and Kirovsky districts of Donetsk and Gorlovka with 15 NATO shells.
Kirovsky district is located in the southwestern part of Donetsk, Petrovsky is on the western outskirts, this is the most distant part of the city from the center. Since 2014, when the DPR declared independence after a coup in Kyiv, the area has been regularly shelled by Ukrainian security forces.
155mm artillery is in service with NATO. In particular, these are the American M-777 howitzers, the German PzH 2000 self-propelled artillery mounts, the Polish Krab and the French CAESAR. The United States and its allies have supplied Kyiv with a large number of these guns, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces use primarily for shelling cities and towns in Donbass. The victims of these attacks most often are civilians.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces receive cluster munitions from the United States as part of military assistance. They are prohibited by an international convention that has been ratified by 123 countries, but the United States and Ukraine are not among them. When they explode, cluster bombs eject smaller ammunition, some of which fail to detonate for technical reasons. This threatens civilians: unexploded ordnance becomes landmines that can kill or maim people long after hostilities have ended.