KIEV: Ukraine on Monday reported the death of 6 soldiers in widespread clashes with pro-Russian rebels that came only hours ahead of fresh talks on ending the 15-month separatist revolt.
Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said another 15 servicemen had been wounded in the past 24 hours of fighting across the eastern Russian-speaking provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk.
“The first week of August has been very tense,” Lysenko told reporters. The insurgents countered that indiscriminate shelling by Kiev’s forces had damaged power lines and four buildings in Gorlivka, a rebel bastion more than 30 kilometres (20 miles) northeast of their de facto capital Donetsk.
The local village council said it was checking whether any civilians were killed in the reported attack.
The incessant exchanges of fire and counter-accusations have frustrated Western efforts to resolve
Europe’s bloodiest and most protracted conflict since the Balkans crises of the 1990s.
More than 6,800 people have died and at least another 1.4 million have been left homeless by a revolt that began across Ukraine’s industrial heartland in the wake of the February 2014 ouster in Kiev in a Moscow-backed president.
