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 Kiev officials said six Ukrainian soldiers were killed overnight
and 18 wounded in attacks by separatists. A seventh soldier was
killed on Friday near the airport, an official of the army general
staff said.
Government troops have a tenuous grip on the airport, even though
the complex, which includes a multi-story control tower and
extensive outbuildings, is now only a battered shell after nine
months of conflict.
Its cratered runways mean it has not functioned for months as an
airport. But it has symbolic value for both sides and has become the
main flashpoint in the fighting even as prospects for a new round of
peace talks dimmed.
Representatives from Ukraine and Russia, separatist leaders and
officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe had been tentatively due to meet in the Belarussian capital,
Minsk, on Friday to try to get a peace effort and ceasefire back on
track.
 But the meeting of the so-called 'contact group' did not get off the
ground, despite calls from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and
German Chancellor Angela Merkel. One rebel official, Denis Pushilin,
left Minsk saying he did not know when a further attempt to hold
talks would be scheduled.
In a report highlighting the collapse of health care in Ukraine's
eastern regions, the Geneva-based World Health Organization on
Friday put the death toll from the nine-month conflict at more than
4,800.
"HOT COMBAT"
A presidential adviser, Yuri Biryukov, said separatists had launched
a full-scale attack on the airport to try to dislodge government
forces.
"They (the separatists) launched a full storm from this morning. We
have wounded on our side. There is hot combat going on there and the
tension and the situation there is the worst I have seen," Biryukov
wrote on his Facebook page.
As night fell, the Kiev military said fighting was still going on
and the military situation was constantly changing.
Ukraine, Russia and separatist leaders agreed in Minsk last
September on a 12-point peace blueprint for scaling down the
conflict, including through a ceasefire.
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But the accord was flouted from the start, with each side blaming
the other. Kiev says 200 soldiers have been killed since the truce
theoretically came into force in early September.
Kiev accuses Russia of failing to comply with the agreement to
withdraw Russian fighters and military equipment from the east.
Despite what the West and Kiev say is incontrovertible evidence,
Moscow denies its troops are involved in the conflict.
Ukraine's parliament voted on Thursday to rotate Ukrainian
front-line troops and resume partial conscription after a security
official said Russian forces had sharply increased military activity
in the east.
Russia reacted to this on Friday saying the move could undermine
peace efforts. "Any action related to military preparations does not
help the process," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news
conference.
"We will hope that all this... does not lead to a renewed military
confrontation."
(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev and Gabriela
Baczynska in Moscow; Writing By Richard Balmforth; Editing by
Crispian Balmer)
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