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 Nine pro-Ukrainian volunteer fighters, supporting Kiev's forces,
were killed in the fighting in Ilovaisk, which lies part way along
the road from Donetsk, the region's main hub, and the border with
Russia, the official, Anton Gerashchenko, said.
Separately, health authorities said 34 civilians had been killed as
a result of fighting in the 24 hours up to noon Wednesday in the
wider Donetsk region, one of two big provinces of Ukraine's
industrial east.
Local authorities in the big eastern city of Luhansk said the city
rocked with the crash of artillery fire and heavy automatic fire on
Wednesday as government forces kept up an assault on rebels who have
occupied key buildings there since April, when the separatist
rebellions erupted.
Luhansk has been largely cut off for weeks and is without water and
regular supplies of electricity which have hit mobile and landline
phone connections. Only vital foodstuffs are on sale while long
queues form for bread being distributed from touring vans.
"The humanitarian crisis is critical. Since there's no electricity,
people are now cooking meals outside in their yards on open fires,"
Oleksander Sabenko, a municipal official, told the Ukrainian news
channel 112.ua.
REBUIDING COST
As well as worsening conditions for the people on the ground, Prime
Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said the fighting was draining the
potential of the economy by the day, with attacks damaging mines,
power stations, rail lines and bridges.
"Russia is aware that rebuilding the Donbass (the industrial east)
will cost not millions but billions of hryvnia," he said.
Nonetheless, government forces are gaining the upper hand after
fighting for four months to quell rebellions in its Russian-speaking
east and are steadily tightening the squeeze on rebels in their two
big bastions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The pro-Western government in Kiev and its allies in the West have
accused Moscow of orchestrating the rebellions and arming the
separatists with tanks, missiles and other heavy weaponry.
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Moscow denies this. But this has not stopped the conflict, which has
taken a heavy human toll, dragging relations between Russia and the
West to their worst level since the end of the Cold War.
The United Nations says an estimated 2,086 people, including
civilians and combatants, have been killed in the four-month
conflict. That figure nearly doubled since the end of July, when
Ukrainian forces stepped up their offensive and fighting started in
urban areas.
Gerashchenko, on his Facebook page, said rebel forces in Ilovaisk
had called up reinforcements after coming under pressure from
pro-Ukrainian volunteer fighters from the so-called Donbass
battalion.
"Street battles continued throughout the night. It's the most
complicated type of close combat," he said.
"The enemy can come up to you from wherever he wants and shoot from
an attic, a basement or from a children's nursery," he said, saying
that nine members of the battalion had been killed.
(Editing by Alison Williams)
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