A Russian rocket attack Thursday on northern Ukraine killed two people from the Danish Refugee Council who were clearing mines in an area previously occupied by Moscow’s forces, local authorities said.
Experts say Ukraine is the most heavily mined country in the world, with teams of deminers deployed across the north, south and east where Ukraine retook land captured by Russia at the start of its 2022 invasion.
“The Russians deliberately targeted workers from the Danish Refugee Council’s humanitarian demining mission… two people are known to have been killed,” Chernigiv regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus posted on social media.
Danish Refugee Council (DRC) said later on Thursday that the strike had hit one of its demining sites.
“The attack claimed the lives of two Ukrainian colleagues and left eight others injured,” DRC said in a statement.
“ At the time of the incident, DRC teams were conducting purely civilian humanitarian activities -—working to clear landmines and explosive remnants of war,” the statement added.
The strike hit near the outskirts of the regional capital of Chernigiv, 125 kilometres (80 miles) north of Kyiv.
“First, the Russians littered the area with explosives and mines. Now they are killing people, civilians who are risking their lives to clear our land,” Vyacheslav Chaus said.
Russian forces surrounded the city at the start of the war, after invading Ukraine from Moscow’s ally Belarus, 50 kilometres away.
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© Agence France-Presse
