Deaths mount daily in renewed Ukraine fighting

Water, power, heat cut to residents as troops, rebels battle.

AVDIIVKA, UKRAINE — Heavy artillery and rockets hit residential areas in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday amid a new outburst of fighting between government troops and Russia-backed separatist rebels, leaving at least eight people dead and dozens injured.

Salvos of heavy-caliber artillery were heard throughout the night and late morning in Avdiivka, a town on the northern outskirts of the separatist stronghold of Donetsk where residents have been without electricity for days. In Donetsk, at least one civilian was killed by shrapnel.

Fighting around Avdiivka has cut water and power supplies for most of the town and it was left without heating in the dead of winter. The warring sides blamed each other for the spike in hostilities, the worst in months. The Ukrainian government was considering evacuating 12,000 residents from Avdiivka, Pavlo Zhebrivsky, head of the administration in charge of the government-controlled parts of the Donetsk region, said on Facebook.

With no signs of an immediate evacuation in sight, some residents went to a local bus station, hoping to get away from the heavy shelling.

Valery Tretyakov said he was having tea at home in Donetsk when he heard a big explosion and the sound of shattering glass. He rushed into the bedroom and saw his wife bleeding from a shrapnel wound to her neck that proved fatal. “It was impossible to stop bleeding,” Tretyakov said. “One minute and that’s all.”

The rebels’ Donetsk News Agency also reported that four fighters died and seven were injured overnight along with three civilians.

Oleksandr Turchynov, chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council, said on Tuesday that shelling around Avdiivka killed at least three government troops and injured 24 more. Another seven soldiers were killed on Sunday and Monday, the government said.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused the Ukrainian government of provoking the hostilities to distract public attention from domestic issues.

Peskov told reporters in Moscow the Kremlin has “reliable information” that Ukrainian volunteer battalions crossed the front line Monday night and tried to capture rebel-controlled territory.

Kiev is worried that Donald Trump’s administration could ease some sanctions on Russia that the U.S. imposed for the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and support for the insurgency in the east.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Tuesday that the escalation of hostilities proves the sanctions must be kept in place “to bring the aggressor to justice.”

Peskov, in turn, said Kiev’s “aggressive actions” threaten to derail a 2015 Ukraine peace deal brokered by France and Germany.