Kyiv, Ukraine – Two aid workers, one Canadian and one Spanish, were killed in east Ukraine, said Kyiv on Sunday blaming Russian forces and calling their deaths near war-ravaged Bakhmut “a painful, irreparable loss”.
The defence ministry said Moscow’s troops had killed Emma Igual, a Spanish citizen who studied at the University of California at Berkeley, and Anthony Ihnat, a Canadian citizen both working for the NGO Road to Relief.
It said in a statement that two volunteers working for the aid group had been injured in the incident in the eastern Donetsk region.
The industrial region has suffered the worst of the fighting of Russia’s invasion launched last February and Moscow claimed to have annexed the territory last year.
Kyiv said the aid workers had dedicated themselves to limiting the harm to civilians caught in the conflict, including by carrying out evacuations and distributing humanitarian relief.
Road to Relief said in a post on its Instagram account that the vehicle the four aid workers were travelling in “came under Russian attack” in Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine on Saturday morning.
In “a direct hit, the vehicle flipped over and (caught) fire,” it said.
The aid workers had left from Slovyansk and were headed to Bakhmut to assess the needs of civilians “caught in crossfire” in the town of Ivanivske.
“All necessary information is currently being gathered, and we are cooperating with both military and police to resolve all matters of concern,” the NGO said.
– ‘Determined to help’ –
Igual, 32, was the director of Road to Relief, which she co-founded with a Frenchman, Henri Camenen, in March 2022, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine.
According to Spanish media, she grew up in Barcelona. In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle published in July, she said her Jewish grandmother escaped the Holocaust in Austria as a teenager and was adopted by a family in Spain after she lost her whole family in concentration camps.
“I grew up with that background, feeling what it must have been like to be a refugee, or to be an orphan, so I felt determined to help people in a similar situation to her,” she told the newspaper.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez offered his condolences to Igual’s family and friends, saying in a message posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “humanitarian workers and civilians can never be a target of war.”
“Spain stands with our aid workers, who through their dedication, put their lives at risk to help others,” he added.
Canada’s foreign ministry confirmed the death of a citizen but gave no further details.
“Our hearts are with their family and loved ones during this very difficult time,” it said.
Road to Relief said a German medical volunteer, Ruben Mawick, and a Swedish volunteer, Johan Mathias Thyr, “were badly injured with shrapnel wounds and burns but are now stable in separate hospitals far from the scene”.
– ‘Happened so fast’ –
Thyr, 34, told Swedish daily Expressen a “suicide drone” had attacked the vehicle.
He said he believed the drone was probably targeting the driver, but the car was British and the driver’s seat was therefore on the right side.
“We crashed and it burst into flames. We were helped by soldiers who drove us to the hospital,” Thyr told the newspaper from his hospital bed in Dnipro where he was being treated for burns.
“It all happened so fast. It took only a minute from the time we crashed in the ditch until the car was enveloped in flames.”
The volunteers were on their way to assess the needs of civilians on the outskirts of Bakhmut, Road to Relief said.
The battle for Bakhmut, which was captured by Russian forces in May, has remained one of the bloodiest of the invasion with Ukrainian forces now pushing back along the northern and southern flanks of the town.
In February, 33-year-old US medic Pete Reed was killed near Bakhmut when his evacuation vehicle was hit by a missile.
In May, AFP video journalist Arman Soldin was killed in Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut by missile fire.