At least 17 killed in Ukraine battles as fight intensifies
Separatists in east Ukraine said 15 people in territory under their control were killed Wednesday during battles around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk that is threatening to tip the country back into full-blown war.
Two other deaths were reported in a government-controlled area.
Russian news agencies cited rebel armed forces chief Vladimir Kononov as saying the dead included fighters and civilians. The figure could not immediately be verified.
The Ukrainian government and rebels have accused one another of sparking the latest round of unrest, which marks some of the worst violence since a ceasefire deal was reached in February.
“The Ukrainian side has carried out a provocation and started shelling our positions all along the front,” the Interfax news agency quoted Kononov as saying.
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko accused rebels of mounting a major artillery barrage against government-held suburbs west of Donetsk early Wednesday.
“The enemy is trying to advance. Ukrainian troops are repelling all attacks and successfully holding onto their positions,” Lysenko said.
Russia’s Tass news agency quoted the chief physician at the trauma centre in Donetsk, Alexander Oprishchenko, as saying his hospital had admitted 60 wounded people for treatment Wednesday, of whom five were in a grave condition.
Implementation of the ceasefire has foundered as battles raged along several points of the 450-kilometre front. Negotiators from the warring sides met for talks in Belarus on Tuesday, but the session concluded without obvious progress.
Reports of casualties among government and separatist fighters have continued unabated, but deaths among non-combatants had almost ceased. That trend has been disrupted in recent days in an indication that the warring sides are again increasingly resorting to indiscriminate shelling.
The head of the governmentcontrolled part of Luhansk region, Hennadiy Moskal, said in a statement on his official website that an elderly couple died when their car was struck by a mortar Wednesday morning, 20 kilometres inside government-held territory.
Russia’s Interfax news agency cited a rebel representative as saying that one resident in the town of Yenakieve was killed near a waste treatment plant during a 20-minute barrage. Ukraine’s military denies it attacked Yenakieve.
The war has killed more than 6,400 people since April 2014.
The armistice signed in February requires both sides to pull back heavy weapons from the front line, but international observers vetting that process regularly note violations across the board.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in its most recent status report that its monitors on Monday heard 109 mainly outgoing explosions from the area around Donetsk airport, which is under rebel control. That neighbourhood is around 15 kilometres from Krasnohorivka and Marinka, the suburbs where fighting was unfolding Wednesday.