Hotel used by journalists struck by Russian attack on Donetsk town

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Russian missiles struck residential areas and a hotel popular with journalists in the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk on Monday, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens.

The Druzhba was one of only a handful of hotels still operating in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk region and was considered by many as being a safe distance from the front line.

Ukrainian authorities on Tuesday morning said seven people had been killed, including five civilians, and 67 people had been injured. Interior minister Ihor Klymenko said some of the rescuers were hit by a second round of missiles as they arrived at the scene to help extract victims from the debris.

Klymenko said search and rescue operations were resuming on Tuesday after being suspended at night “due to the high threat of repeated shelling”.

Images from the first attack, 40 minutes before the strike on the hotel, show civilians dressed in summer clothing trying to sift through the rubble of a damaged apartment block and loading the injured into ambulances. 

In his nightly address, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had used short-range Iskander ballistic missiles to attack “normal residential buildings” in Pokrovsk.

The town has been hit intermittently since start of the full-scale invasion but never on this scale. Considered a safe distance from the frontline by many, at 41 miles from any active fighting, the hotel was often fully booked, as was the restaurant next door, one of the few that stayed open throughout the invasion. It was the main place where journalists, soldiers and volunteers would come to rest after a day in the field.

Images from Tuesday morning show that one side of the hotel, including several floors, was taken out in the attack. All the hotel windows appear to have been blown out. A rocket also smashed through the top of a nearby residential building.

The attack is reminiscent of one on a restaurant in neighbouring Kramatorsk in late June when 11 people were killed and more than 60 injured as they sat down to dinner. Both attacks make the prospect of staying in the region more difficult for journalists, aid workers and volunteers.

The hotel in Pokrovsk is the sixth hotel destroyed in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk region since the invasion began. Now just three establishments remain.

Russia also attacked Kharkiv and Kherson overnight, killing a total of seven people, including two rescue workers and two police officers, and injuring a further 13.