Bomb Hits Odesa Office Of Group That Aids Wounded Troops

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

March 23, 2015

ODESA, Ukraine -- Police in Odesa say a homemade bomb exploded near an apartment block in the Ukrainian Black Sea port city late on March 22.

Authorities were treating the explosion, the latest in a series of bomb blasts in Odesa and the eastern city of Kharkiv in recent months, as a terrorist act.

Nobody was hurt.

Police said the blast damaged the office of Padaigma 12, an organization that aids handicapped people and in recent months has been helping soldiers wounded in the conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Other offices on the building's ground floor were also damaged.

Ukrainian authorities blame the blasts in Odesa and Kharkiv, many of which have apparently targeted organizations that have ties to soldiers fighting in the east, on Russia and the rebels who hold parts of the eastern provinces on Donetsk and Luhansk. 

Both cities are under government control but are seen as prizes coveted by the Russian-backed rebels.