19 killed in E. Ukraine amid rising tensions

At least 19 people have been killed and dozens of others wounded in fighting in eastern Ukraine over the past day, underscoring the escalation of tension in the almost ten-month conflict, reports showed Thursday.

"The situation remains tense. In the past 24 hours, the armed groups carried out 103 attacks on Ukrainian positions," the press service of the government's military operation said.

Intense fighting was still taking place in the main rebel- controlled Donetsk city and near Debaltsevo town, which lies on the highway, linking Donetsk with another insurgent stronghold of Lugansk.

According to Donetsk municipal council, shelling in the city overnight killed three civilians and wounded ten others.

In Debaltsevo, a child and two women were killed, after pro- independence insurgents launched an assault on Ukrainian military in the outskirts of the city using heavy artillery, a regional department of the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

It said that another victim was a woman, who died when a mortar shell hit a flat where she lived in Avdeevka town.

As a result of the fighting across the restive region, five Ukrainian servicemen have been killed and 29 wounded in the past 24 hours, a government military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said.

Eduard Basurin, the senior insurgent commander, said that seven soldiers from the rebel forces died and 41 injured in the previous day's fighting.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine, which started in April 2014, made an increasingly violent shift earlier this month, when rebels launched an offensive against government troops after scheduled peace talks in Astana were cancelled.

Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France, who were due to take part in the negotiations, delayed their meeting in the Kazakhstan capital, pointing to the lack of progress in implementation of the previous peace deal signed in September 2014 in Minsk, Belarus.

Insurgents have been long seeking direct talks with the Ukrainian government over the crisis, but Kiev has repeatedly rejected the calls.

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