Donetsk, Jun 7 - DAN. The Donetsk Water Treatment Plant (DFS) has stopped operation, all DFS personnel has been evacuated, head of the DPR Mission to the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination Ruslan Yakubov told the Donetsk News Agency.
“The evacuation of the DFS personnel has been completed with the assistance of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine; the facility is temporarily mothballed,” Yakubov said.
The DFS will not operate for at least five days. Talks are now underway with international observers over the resumption of monitoring of DFS shift changes, he added.
Earlier reports said that the pause in DFS operation longer than five days was fraught with a humanitarian catastrophe in the region. The DFS area is a hot spot in Donbass. It is located outside Yasinovataya and feeds water to both sides of the contact line. The number of DFS customers exceeds 400,000.
OSCE representatives stepped up the monitoring of the DFS situation after a number of incidents in which car convoys of the Voda Donbassa company (which services the DFS) came under fire in mid-April. Five DFS personnel were injured by Ukrainian forces’ aimed fire and the facility was shut down for several days. The DFS situation has worsened at present. The OSCE SMM refused to provide assistance to the sides in the DFS area as its patrols came under fire.*jk