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Ukrainian forces, insurgents blame each other for ceasefire violation

09 September 2014 03:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. After gunfire hit areas near several towns in eastern Ukraine overnight Monday, insurgents and government forces accused each other of breaking the agreed ceasefire, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the National Security and Defense Council, said insurgent attacks on Ukrainian forces occurred near ten towns in Donetsk region and four communities in Lugansk region.

"In spite of the declared ceasefire, the situation in the area remains difficult. The attacks on the Ukrainian positions continue," Lysenko said.

At the same time, Lysenko emphasized that no heavy artillery had been used in the attacks and neither Ukrainian soldiers nor civilians had been killed.

There also have been no reports about the rebel casualties over the last 24 hours.

Earlier in the day, the press service of the self-proclaimed People's Donetsk Republic said in a statement that there had been seven violations of the ceasefire by the government troops in the past day.

The special monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine also said that artillery shelling was reported near Mariupol, an Azov Sea port town, on Sunday evening.

Representatives of Ukraine's government and insurgent leadership signed a ceasefire deal in Minsk, Belarus, on Friday to pave the way for a solution to the Ukraine crisis and a permanent end to the bloodshed in eastern regions.

The OSCE said it has redeployed 59 of its specialists in Ukraine's restive areas in the last two days to better monitor the truce regime.

Observers have been wary of evaluating the ceasefire and predicting how long it will last, but believe that the single day without human deaths gives hopes for a political settlement of the conflict.

Government troops and independence-seeking insurgents have been locked in fierce confrontation in eastern Ukraine since mid-April, leaving at least 3,000 people dead, according to the latest UN estimations.