At least 10 civilians, including children, have been killed in shelling in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Saturday.
Pro-Russian separatists are blamed for the attack on residential areas in the port city, said Donetsk regional police chief Vyacheslav Abroskin on his Facebook page.
The latest reported incident comes amid a surge in fighting between government forces and pro-Russian rebels.
Thousands have been killed since the conflict broke out in the spring, and a ceasefire agreed to in September crumbled long ago.
The foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia met this week in Berlin to discuss a way out of the violence. But despite the talks, violence in the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions shows no sign of abating.
Thursday’s shelling of a transit stop in Donetsk city — an attack that Ukraine’s Defense Ministry blamed on rebels — killed eight civilians, according to state news reports. But Ukrainian troops have come under heavy fire, as well.
That includes 115 attacks in a recent 24-hour period that killed three troops and wounded 50 more, Ukrinform, the Ukrainian National News Agency, reported Friday.
Ukraine accuses Russia of sending troops and equipment over the border. Moscow denies the claims.
From mid-April to January 21, the conflict killed at least 5,086 people and injured at least 10,948 others, said the United Nations.
“We fear that the real figure may be considerably higher,” the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said about the death toll in a report released Friday.