Updated 11:05 p.m. Moscow Time
GENEVA, October 3 (RIA Novosti) - More than 3,600 people have been killed and some 8,500 have been wounded since the start of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine in April, a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday.
According to the OCHA weekly situation report, "at least 3,627 [had been] killed (including 298 from flight MH17) and 8,446 [had been] wounded in eastern Ukraine as of September 30."
"Despite ceasefire and a 9-point memorandum signed by the parties on September 19, serious ceasefire violations are reported daily and shelling has intensified in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions," the report stressed.
On Wednesday, 26 people were killed and 50 others were injured as a result of shelling in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, according to Andrei Purgin, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).
Late Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed that one of its delegates to Ukraine, Swiss citizen Laurent DuPasquier, was among the victims of the heavy artillery bombardment of central Donetsk.
Moscow condemned the incident as a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and insisted on an objective and thorough investigation into the matter.
Ukraine has been engulfed in a violent internal conflict since mid-April, when Kiev began its military operation against independence supporters in the southeastern regions of the country.
The sides agreed on a ceasefire at a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine held in Minsk on September 5. Both sides have subsequently accused each other of violating the agreement.
Another meeting of the Contact Group on September 19 resulted in a memorandum, specifying the implementation of the ceasefire and stipulating the creation of a 30-kilometer (18-mile) buffer zone, withdrawal of all heavy weapons from residential areas and the deployment of monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in southeastern Ukraine.
