A member of the Reuters team that is still providing coverage on the conflict in Ukraine has gone missing, and two of his colleagues have been admitted to the hospital due to the attack on a hotel in Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine.
A statement from the news agency said that the Hotel Sapphire, where a six-member team of Reuters was residing, was ‘’ targeted by a missile strike’ on Saturday. Deep concern was, however, raised with one of the agency’s employees missing while the other two were admitted to the hospital for treatment.
The agency also stated that three other co-workers are being reported missing and that they are “still seeking more information, actively involved with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and are doing everything we can to support our colleagues and their families. ” They were also assured that they would share more information as soon as more details were available.
Later on Sunday morning, the governor of Donetsk region, Vadym Filashkin, confirmed the fact of the incident in his Telegram channel. He said that “the Russians attacked Kramatorsk” and that two reporters got hurt; another went unaccounted for after the shelling of a hotel.
“The authorities, the police, the rescuers are on the site now,” the governor continued, “the debris clearance and the search for the survivors are in progress. ”
However, according to the records available, the Russian Defence Ministry has not commented on the requests for comment on the subject.
In its turn, Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s Office stated in the Telegram that it launched a “pre-trial investigation” in relation to the strike, whose time was stated to be 10:35 p.m. local time or 1935 GMT with respect to Saturday. The office also claimed that “Russian troops targeted the city of Kramatorsk, most likely with an Iskander-M missile. “
But as the investigation straightens out and the search for the missing journalist goes on, the incident bears the sad fact of the great danger and difficulty of the work of the correspondents who are covering the ongoing war in Ukraine.
