6 Ukraine soldiers killed, 14 injured in new clashes
Clashes between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russia forces have left six Ukrainian soldiers killed and 14 others wounded in the east of the country.
“Six Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 14 injured as a result of active hostilities in the past 24 hours,” Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev on Saturday.
Meanwhile, authorities in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) accused the government in Kiev of launching rocket attacks against civilians in pro-Russia areas of eastern Ukraine.
“Between 6 in the morning on June 12 and 6 in the morning on June 13, we registered three violations of the ceasefire regime,” an LPR official was quoted as saying.
Pro-Russia sources also reported three shelling attacks by the Ukrainian military in Donetsk, saying two civilians lost their lives in the raids.
Earlier in the day, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is commissioned to monitor the fragile truce between the two sides of the conflict, confirmed an increase in the military activity in the war-torn eastern Ukraine.
“It is an escalation … We have seen an increase in numbers of hot spots,” said Alexander Hug, the OSCE deputy chief monitor.
Hug also warned against jeopardizing the Minsk ceasefire agreement which was clinched in the Belarusian capital in February.
“There are clear indications that there is a backward trend at the moment,” he added.
UNICEF on child fatalities
On Friday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced that at least 68 children have been killed since the eruption of violence in the restive region.
“UNICEF expects the actual number of child casualties to be considerably higher than reported as many areas remain inaccessible due to conflict,” UNICEF Spokesman Christophe Boulierac said.
The conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine after people in Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea voted for reunification with Russia in March 2014. The situation exacerbated after Kiev dispatched troops to the eastern Ukrainian regions of Lugansk and Donetsk in April 2014 in an attempt to quell pro-Russians there. The crisis so far has claimed the lives of at least 6,400 people, according to UN figures.
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