Shelling hits virus hospital in eastern Ukraine

A hospital in eastern Ukraine was shelled late Tuesday night, shattering windows and cutting off the power supply to ventilators.

The artillery shell exploded shortly before midnight at the Marinskaya Central District hospital in the town of Krasnohorivka, some 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) west of Donetsk and near the frontline between government and separatist forces.

No casualties were reported as a result of the shelling, regional police said in a statement, though a hospital building where 45 coronavirus patients are undergoing treatment, and an ambulance were damaged.

Local authorities blamed the shelling on separatists in eastern Ukraine and launched a criminal investigation into the incident.

"We were asleep already and then there was this terrible explosion. There was rubble and the electricity went out, so the ventilators shut down immediately," Konstantyn Pryhod'ko, a coronavirus patient at the hospital, told the Associated Press.

He added that a patient in the same ward had died from a heart attack on Wednesday after the shelling.

In recent weeks, increasing violations of a shaky cease-fire in eastern Ukraine and a Russian troop build up across the border raised Ukrainian and Western concerns that large-scale hostilities might commence.

Tensions eased last week after Moscow announced a pullback of its forces following massive drills.

"We've simply been abandoned, and nobody cares about us," said local resident Natalia Zhabko.

"It's only when something like this happens that everyone suddenly remembers we exist."

Fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists erupted in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, called Donbas, shortly after Moscow's 2014 annexation the Crimean Peninsula.

More than 14,000 people have been killed during the seven-year conflict.