B.C. doctor who worked with Canadian aid worker killed in Ukraine calls for federal denouncement of attack
Global News
Dr. Tracey Parnell, of Cranbrook, said the Russian attack that killed Anthony “Tonko” Ihnat was a deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers.
A B.C. doctor who has made six trips to Ukraine since the start of the war is calling on the Canadian government to denounce the attack that killed a Canadian aid worker.
Dr. Tracey Parnell, of Cranbrook, said the worker was a colleague, adding the Russian attack that killed Anthony “Tonko” Ihnat was a deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers.
“We all know this work is very dangerous, but this was a targeted attack on a humanitarian vehicle with humanitarian aid workers,” Dr. Parnell told Global News. “To know the workers were targeted because they were helping people is very hard to process … being in the wrong place at the wrong time is very different than targeting those who are helping people.”
Inhat was killed riding in a vehicle with three others in the town of Ivanivske, in the Bakmut region, when their vehicle was hit by Russian fire, last weekend.
The workers were part of the humanitarian group Road to Relief, who confirmed Ihnat was killed on a social media post.
The post says German medical volunteer Ruben Mawick and Swedish volunteer Johan Mathias Thyr were badly injured and hospitalized, while the status of Spanish volunteer and Road to Relief Director Emma Igual remains unknown.
However, Spain’s acting Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Spanish media that authorities in Madrid had received “verbal confirmation” of the 32-year-old Igual’s death.
The Cranbrook doctor said she worked with both Ihnat and Igual while in Ukraine.