Six Ukrainian soldiers killed as clashes surge

KIEV, July 24, (AFP): Six Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and thirteen wounded in a fresh surge of fighting between pro-Russian rebels and government forces in the country’s wartorn east, Kiev said Sunday.

“In the past 24 hours, to our great regret, as a result of the hostilities, six Ukrainian soldiers were killed and thirteen of our men wounded”, Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told journalists, adding that another eight soldiers were suffering from shell-shock.

Motuzyanyk told AFP that the Ukrainian army suffered the majority of the losses in fierce shelling by insurgents overnight around the major rebel hub Lugansk and the government-held city of Mariupol.