Car bomb kills senior military official in Lugansk

Amid recent fighting in eastern Ukraine, a military official with pro-Russia forces has been killed in a car bombing in Lugansk.

Sources from the pro-Russians reported on Saturday that Oleg Anashchenko, who used to serve as the head of the military department of Lugansk, was killed.

Another person also died in the explosion, which the pro-Russians blamed on Ukrainian forces. Sources in Kiev denied the accusation.

Nearly 9,500 people have died and over 21,000 others injured in the war, according to the United Nations.

Crisis erupted in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, when Kiev launched its first formal military action against the pro-Russians who had seized government buildings in towns and cities across the region. The ethnic Russian population in the east began to resist the rise of a pro-Western, anti-Russian government in Kiev, following the stepping down of former President Viktor Yanukovych in February the same year. The pro-Russians are mainly concentrated in Donetsk and Lugansk.

A similar blast in August nearly killed Igor Plotnitsky, a senior official in Lugansk, which is the smaller of the two regions. Senior officials in Donetsk have also been targeted in car bombings. Some of them have been killed.

SS