OSCE gets down to inquiry into shelling of bus stop in Donetsk

Members of the monitoring mission of the European security organization OSCE in Ukraine have launched an inquiry into Thursday’s shelling of a bus stop in the much-troubled eastern city of Donetsk that claimed the lives of at least thirteen people and left dozens of others wounded.
“A seven-strong patrol of the OSCE is working on the spot right now,” Alexander Hug, a deputy chief of the Special Monitoring Mission said.
“The inquiry is still in progress and I’ll report facts to you as soon as we get them,” he told a news conference.
The bus stop came under gunfire at around 08:30 local time. Early data suggests fire was opened from a minibus and it set a trolley and a passenger car ablaze.
Eyewitnesses said five shots had been made all in all.
Law enforcement agencies of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics say Ukrainian military were involved in the incident and they had launched investigative actions of their own.
Identity and security checks are underway everywhere across the city, as policemen and self-defense fighters stop all the transport vehicles for inspection. One of their objectives is to track down the minibus with a ‘wandering’ mortar.

“It’s too early to claim yet that a subversive group involved in this crime has been detained,” Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the DPR Defence Ministry told TASS.
He said an exact cause of the blast had not been established yet and the type of the projectile that had exploded was also unknown.
Basurin also indicated the authorities still did not have the exact data on the wounded.
“We detain subversive groups here in Donetsk quire regularly and we’re working in that field but it’s too early yet to claim anyone’s involvement in what happened Thursday morning.
Andrey Lysenko, the speaker of the National Security and Defense Council said the town of Peski was the closest place to Donetsk where the Ukrainian military could be found.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry said its turn the trolleybus that had been destroyed was fifteen kilometers away from the spot where the Ukrainian military were deployed.