Civilian areas affected by surge in Ukraine fighting

MOSCOW: Fighting in eastern Ukraine has intensified amid reports of deadly shelling in dozens of civilian areas and mounting hardships for people living in the conflict zone. The flare-up in the simmering three-year-old conflict between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed rebels coincided with Ukraine assuming the month-long presidency of the UN Security Council. “The situation of the civilian population has reached a critical stage,” said Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, who currently chairs the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

“We have thousands of people without water, power and heating amid very low temperatures,” he told a press conference during a visit in Moldova’s capital Chisinau on Friday. Kurz demanded an end of the violence, as well as access for OSCE observers and for humanitarian workers, Austrian press agency APA reported. The Ukrainian military reported another six soldiers dead on Friday, raising the number of military casualties to at least 16 over the past week. The government reported at least two civilians killed around the industrial town of Avdiivka, in the war-torn Donetsk region, which borders Russia.

Several other civilians were wounded, including a British photojournalist, the state’s Anti-Terrorist Operation said in a statement on its Facebook page. Russia accused the Ukrainian military of heavy shelling of the rebel stronghold city of Donetsk, where several civilians were killed. “This barbarous attack cannot be justified,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in comments carried by state news agency TASS. She denounced the shelling of the city as a violation of the 1949 Geneva convention on the protection of civilians in times of war. — DPA