Seven children injured in Sloviansk shelled by Ukrainian army

Seven children were injured in Sloviansk, Donetsk region, when Ukrainian armed forces fired at residential districts of the city, Russian presidential commissioner for children's rights Pavel Astakhov wrote on Twitter on Friday.

The Donetsk regional health department reported that seven children received bullet and shrapnel wounds during the Ukrainian army's attack, Astakhov said.

When Ukrainian armed forces shelled residential districts in Sloviansk overnight, a shell hit a hospital for children and another children's polyclinic was damaged, a source of the local militia told an ITAR-TASS correspondent in Sloviansk.

The press service of the Russian commissioner for children’s rights said on Friday that children's resort centers in Russian regions near Ukraine, including the Kursk region and Crimea, were ready to receive children from southeastern Ukraine where combat actions continued.On May 28, a shell broke the roof of an auditorium in a school in the residential district of Artyom. Children and teachers in the building were not hurt. They escaped into the basement used as a bomb shelter. Shelling of the same district on May 27 killed four people.

"We are ready to receive all the children. Bordering territories the Belgorod, Voronezh and Kursk regions all are ready to accommodate children. We are also ready to send them to Crimea," the press service cited the commissioner as saying.

It is impossible for the Russian side to help take children out because they are citizens of another state, Ukraine, he noted. "To help them, it is necessary to find an acceptable legal way to take them from the zone of combat actions," Astakhov said.