On October 1, 2014, the academic school year started in the Donetsk People’s Republic, it was postponed from September 1 in connection with the hostilities. Lots of children gathered at the celebratory assembly in the courtyards of their schools.
At about 10:00 a.m., the Kievsky District of Donetsk came under fire. The first shell of the “Hurricane” MLRS exploded next to the “Poligraficheskaya Street” public transport stop in Kievsky Avenue, where a fixed-route taxi number 17 stopped at that moment. As a result, six persons died; seven passengers on the bus and eighteen people in the street were injured.
A few minutes later, another round of ammunition exploded in the courtyard of the Donetsk School No. 57, where the celebratory assembly was taking place at that moment. There were 238 people, including 70 children and 28 teachers. The explosion of the second shell killed three persons – a biology teacher, a relative of one of the school students and a militia man.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission also recorded this event. “When at the scene, the SMM saw a large crater, one metre in diameter, some 50 metres from the school, which it assessed to have been the impact of a shell of an unspecified nature. The SMM was guided inside the building by “DPR” representatives, who showed the SMM two bodies on the floor. There were no casualties among the school children, according to the “DPR” representatives. The SMM moved to a street a few hundred meters from the school, where “DPR” representatives said that shelling had caused other victims. On arrival, the SMM approached the bus station where it saw a bus almost entirely burnt out, and could observe six bodies at the scene. Around fifty metres north of the bus, the SMM saw a metallic object stuck in the asphalt which appeared to be a large rocket canister, the Mission report reads.
In this investigation, the explosion of the first shell (at the public transport stop) will be thoroughly studied; when investigating the second shell explosion, we will rely on the measurements made by the war correspondents of the Novorosiya TV channel on October 4, 2014.
In addition, it should be noted that in October 2014 Donetsk came under fire from the “Hurricane” MLRS many times. In the future, all these cases will also be analyzed and added to this investigation.
As a result of the investigation, it was established, on October 1, 2014 at about 10:00 am, the Kievsky District of Donetsk came under the fire of the “Hurricane” MLRS. The first shell exploded nearby the “Poligraficheskaya Street” public transport stop in Kievsky Avenue, where a fixed-route taxi number 17 stopped at that moment. A few minutes later, another round of ammunition exploded in the courtyard of the Donetsk School No. 57, where the celebratory assembly was taking place at that moment. The 220mm jet projectiles flew in the direction from south-west to north-east (azimuth 220 degrees).
As a result of the analysis of news videos and information from the Internet, it was found that the units of the 27th Rocket Artillery Regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine could be located in the sector from which the shelling was carried out. The commander of the 27th RAR, Colonel Valery Shapazovych Ismailov undertook the general command of this unit. Major Dmitry Vasilievich Gorb also could be involved in the preparation and bringing orders to the execution.