Breaches threaten ceasefire

A shaky truce in Ukraine was already at risk on its second day yesterday with both the Kiev government and pro-Russian separatists accusing each other of attacks holding up an agreed pull-back of heavy weapons from the frontline.

Pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine said yesterday they will only start pulling back weapons from the frontline under a peace deal once there is a "full ceasefire".

"In accordance with the Minsk agreement, the withdrawal of military hardware can only happen under certain conditions and one of them is a full ceasefire," Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the defence ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic was quoted as saying by the rebels' official news agency.

"If the Ukrainian army does not stop shooting and violating the Minsk agreement then the forces of the Donetsk People's Republic will not withdraw their arms," Basurin said.

"There is no question at the moment of us withdrawing heavy weapons" because of persistent rebel attacks, a Ukrainian military spokesman, Vladyslav Seleznyov, told AFP.

The main hotspot was Debaltseve, a key transport hub located between Donetsk and Lugansk, where fighting is unabated.

AFP journalists and an OSCE monitoring team near Debaltseve observed shelling in the area. They were unable to enter the town because of the hostilities between thousands of government troops inside, and the rebels who have mostly surrounded it.

A municipal official who fled the town, Natalia Karabuta, told AFP that around 5,000 civilians were still trapped inside, with little food and water.

After a lull on Sunday, "today (yesterday) it all flared up again, and non-stop explosions were heard," she said.

The separatists also said Ukrainian troops had fired on Donetsk airport as journalists were being shown around. No casualties were reported.

Kiev said five Ukrainian troops have been killed and 25 wounded in the town of Shyrokin, near the coastal city of Mariupol, since the ceasefire started.

Under the terms of a European-mediated peace plan agreed last week, two days of a "comprehensive" ceasefire were meant to lead to a withdrawal of heavy weapons from the frontline, starting at midnight (2200 GMT) yesterday.

Other steps, including a prisoner swap and negotiations over increased autonomy for separatist-ruled areas, were then to follow.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said during a visit to Bulgaria that "the Ukraine armed forces are fully observing the ceasefire regime but unfortunately in response we have received 112... attacks in the past 24 hours from the terrorists of Donetsk and Lugansk".