At least eight civilians have been killed by fighting and shelling in two cities in eastern Ukraine held by separatist militants, officials said today.
Authorities in Luhansk said five people were killed and 15 injured by overnight artillery strikes. Three were killed in Donetsk as a result of clashes, the city’s government said.
Territory between the cities has seen intensified fighting as government troops try to gain control over the area where Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was downed earlier this month.
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The fighting has forced international experts to abandon plans, for a second day running, to get to the site in eastern Ukraine to conduct their investigation into flight MH17, officials and pro-Russian rebels said.
The Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe said on Twitter its experts travelling with Australian and Dutch ones were forced to return to the provincial capital of Donetsk for “security reasons”.
Rebel leader Vladimir Antyufeyev told reporters in Donetsk the separatist fighters escorting international experts to the site encountered fighting and turned back.
Both sides in the conflict have traded accusations over the mounting civilian death toll.
Rebels accuse government troops of deploying artillery against residential areas. Authorities deny that charge, but also complain of insurgents using apartment blocks as firing positions.
At least 1,129 people have been killed and 3,442 wounded in the Ukraine conflict since mid-April, UN monitors in the country said in their fourth monthly report today.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement that increasingly intense fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions was extremely alarming and the shooting down of Malaysian airliner on July 17th may amount to a war crime.
Ukraine has accused rebels of tampering with evidence and trying to cover up their alleged role in bringing the Malaysia Airlines plane down with an anti-aircraft missile.
Separatist officials have staunchly denied responsibility for shooting down the airliner and killing all 298 people on board. A Ukrainian security spokesman said data from the recovered flight recorders shows Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed due to a massive, explosive loss of pressure after being punctured multiple times by shrapnel.
Andrei Lysenko said the plane suffered “massive explosive decompression” after it was hit by fragments he said came from a missile. The data recorders were sent to UK experts for examination.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said today Moscow was hopeful an investigation into the downing of the airliner would be objective and respect a presumption of innocence.
“Only the honest, open participation of all those who have access to information about the crash can be regarded as normal. Anything else we will consider deceitful attempts to influence the investigation, putting presumption of innocence in doubt,” he told a news conference.
Yesterday, the US State Department released satellite images which it says back up its claims that rockets have been fired from Russia into eastern Ukraine and heavy artillery for separatists has also crossed the border.
Mr Lavrov dismissed the claims during a televised press conference today, asking “why it took 10 days” for the US to release the images.
A four-page document released by the State Department appears to show blast marks from where rockets were launched and craters where they landed.
Officials said the images, sourced from the US Director of National Intelligence, show heavy weapons fired between July 21st and July 26th - after the July 17th downing of MH17.
Mr Lavrov said the Kremlin would not take tit-for-tat measures or act “hysterically” in response to sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union over the Ukraine crisis. “We’re not preparing to act on the principle of ‘an eye for an eye’,” Mr Lavrov said. “We want to tackle the situation with a sober head and the President has already said that of course we can’t ignore it. But to fall into hysterics and respond to a blow with a blow is not worthy of a major country.”
Mr Lavrov also said Moscow was hopeful monitors from the European rights and security watchdog, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, could be deployed along Russia’s border with Ukraine. He said they would see that accusations rebels are travelling freely into Ukraine from Russia are false.
Ukrainian officials have said the mission is largely pointless because it involves only about two dozen observers monitoring the 2,000km border between the two countries.
World aviation chiefs will meet tomorrow to discuss issues surrounding the downing of MH17 over Ukraine. The meeting, in Montreal, comes after Dubai-based carrier Emirates announced it would stop flying over Iraq amid fears of missile threats to passenger planes from terrorists.
At the talks in Canada, the question of airline routing over war-torn areas will be discussed by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (Iata). Also attending will be representatives of the Airports Council International and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation.
Agencies