STRINGER / REUTERS
According to the governor of the Kherson region, they were killed by a Russian strike. It was not immediately clear whether they were Ukrainian military “volunteers” or aid workers.
Two “volunteers” French people were killed and three other people were lightly injured Thursday February 1 during a Russian strike in Beryslav, near Kherson in southern Ukraine, a Ukrainian official announced. “Foreign volunteers were killed and injured due to enemy strike on Beryslav”the governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, wrote on Telegram. “The Russian army killed two French citizens. Three other foreigners were slightly injured.he added, without specifying the exact functions of these “volunteers” – an expression often used to refer to workers of humanitarian organizations – and offering his “sincere condolences to the families of the dead”. It is unclear whether they were aid workers or “volunteers” from the Ukrainian army.
The Ukrainian national police, for their part, indicated that two men of French nationality had died following a drone attack, and that three men and a woman had been injured. She announced, on Telegram, the opening of an investigation for violation of the laws and customs of war. “All the victims had come to the Kherson region as volunteers”added the police.
Requested during the night from Thursday to Friday by AFP, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond.
Beryslav, which had around 12,000 inhabitants before the war, is located on the northern bank of the Dnieper River, near the front line.