Attackers torch four OSCE vehicles in Donetsk

OSCE observers based in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine said Sunday that four of their vehicles were torched outside their hotel in an apparent arson attack.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s special monitoring mission to Ukraine wrote in a Tweet: “4 OSCE armoured vehicles destroyed overnight in apparent arson attack.”

It added that the OSCE mission “deplores such actions.”

The reinforced glass of the windows of the armoured vehicles had cracked in the heat of the fire and their paint had peeled off, an AFP photographer saw.

They were parked outside the Park Inn Hotel in downtown Donetsk with around 20 other OSCE vehicles

Ukraine’s military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk linked the attack to the OSCE’s statements on the conflict in the region.

“We know that representatives of the OSCE mission recently have given a lot of information that is unfavourable to the unlawful armed groups who today have occupied Donetsk,” he said at a briefing in Kiev on Sunday.

“It’s obvious that this was done by their partners in crime.”

The rebels however blamed the attack on “Ukrainian saboteurs,” according to their official website.

A senior rebel figure, Denis Pushilin, said the separatist authorities had “stepped up security measures for the mission representatives,” quoted by the separatists’ official news agency.

The number of attacks on OSCE observers has increased in recent weeks in war-torn eastern Ukraine.

One observer suffered a minor head injury in late July after being caught in an exchange of heavy gun and sniper fire in Shyrokyne, a village around 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Mariuopol, the only major city in the conflict zone still under Kiev’s control.

The OSCE’s deputy mission chief in Ukraine, Alexander Hug, told reporters at the time that this was one of three recent “targeted security incidents.”

The Western monitors said that coming under “targeted fire” had forced them to rethink their future operations in the region.

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