Ukrainian government forces reportedly shell Kominternovo village in Donbas

Ten residential houses were damaged in the shelling

MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/. The Ukrainian military again shelled the Kominternovo settlement in south Donbas, where one civilian was injured, head of the local administration Oleg Morgun told the Donetsk News Agency on Monday.

"Yesterday in the afternoon, once again they shelled Kominternovo," he said. "One civilian was injured with a fragment and was taken to hospital. He is fine now."

Further information is under way, he said.

Ten residential houses were damaged in the shelling of the Kominternovo settlement the night to Friday.

One residential house was completely destroyed, the agency added. Commander of 9th regiment of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) defense ministry Colonel Andrey Oprischenko said that "five houses have been damaged only over the last three hours." Oprischenko noted that Ukrainian forces shelled Kominternovo from mortars of 82mm and 120mm calibre and anti-tank guided missiles.

DPR defense ministry reported earlier that Ukrainian forces shelled Kominternovo at night firing at least 10 mines at the settlements.

Kominternovo was visited on Friday by delegations of representatives of OSCE led by Deputy Chief Monitor of the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) Alexander Hug, of the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) and of DPR defense ministry. The delegations registered evidence of ceasefire violations.

On Sunday, Donbas’s state-run gas company, Donbasgaz, restored gas supplies to Kominternovo in the buffer zone in south Donbass, which were interrupted after the shelling.

The local militia and representatives of the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) provided security for the workers. "There, the distance between the damaged pipe and the Ukrainian checkpoint is only 700 metres," the local administration’s head said.

On Wednesday the Contact Group on settling the situation in south-east Ukraine agreed that it is necessary to observe the ceasefire regime in Donbas. "We fully support the proposal (of Russian envoy to the Contact Group) to make a new attempt to ensure full ceasefire observance on the occasion of the Old New Year," the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) envoy Martin Sajdik said. This is the seventh attempt since autumn 2014 to fully observe the ceasefire in Donbas.

Ceasefire is envisaged by the Minsk accords signed on 12 February 2015, after negotiations in the so-called "Normandy format" in the Belarusian capital Minsk, bringing together Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The Minsk accords also envisage weaponry withdrawal, prisoner exchange, local election in Donbas, constitutional reform in Ukraine and establishing working sub-groups on security, political, economy and humanitarian components of the Minsk accords.

The Ukrainian forces and the self-defence forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics have repeatedly accused each other of violating ceasefire and other points of the Minsk agreements.

 
Source: ITAR-TASS 18-01-2016