Donetsk, Ukraine:
At least three civilians were killed in shelling on Tuesday in eastern Ukraine as fighting continued between government and rebel forces in the separatist-held city of Donetsk.
AP reporters saw the bodies of two people killed while waiting for a bus. Separatist authorities said another person died from an attack elsewhere in the city.
Fighting spiked over the weekend in the bitter battle for control over Donetsk’s now-shattered airport. The level of artillery exchanges has abated since that peak.
The United Nations estimates that more than 4,700 people have died since the unrest began.
Six people were treated in hospital for injuries on Tuesday after what police said was a grenade attack on a group of Ukrainian nationalists in the eastern city of Kharkiv which several officials blamed on pro-Russian forces.
The explosion, the latest in a spate of mystery blasts targeting Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities, occurred on Monday evening as people left a court hearing into a firearms case against a young nationalist.
Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million, is more than 220 km from the separatist conflict zone further east where Ukrainian government forces are battling pro-Russian rebels.
Right Sector, a far-right group which played a prominent role in street protests that toppled Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovich a year ago, said several of its activists had been hurt and pointed the finger at pro-Russian rebels.
“At the end of the court hearing, people began to go out of the courthouse and at that moment there was the explosion. As a result, 13 people were hurt, six of them received wounds,” a police statement said.
Police said the explosion appeared to have been caused by a grenade.
Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, launched an anti-terrorist operation in the city after Monday’s attack, which officials said had clearly targeted people, unlike previous blasts in Kharkiv, the southern city of Odessa and elsewhere.
“We see a link with this and preceding explosions in Kharkiv and Odessa. As to who carried this out, it is our home-grown traitors, the pro-Russian elements,” Markiyan Lubkivsky, a senior SBU official, told Reuters.
“We have no doubt this was a well-organised system which is directed from across the border from Russia.” Kharkiv is a major defence centre producing high-tech military equipment for Ukraine’s defence industry. Other sites targeted in the city in recent months include a National Guard base, a military hospital and a bar where money was being collected for Ukrainian soldiers.
Andriy Sanin, a local Right Sector activist, said: “It is clear this was an attack on the lads of Right Sector. The pro-Russian terrorists have already several times carried out terrorist attacks in our city. This is their work.” “The pro-Russian bandits will pay for this in full,” a Right Sector statement said.
