A rocket attack by pro-Russian rebels on a post on Ukraine’s border with Russia today may have killed as many as 30 soldiers and border guards, an interior inistry adviser said, promising swift retribution from Kiev.
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko called an emergency meeting to discuss what could be the deadliest rebel attack on government forces since the Ukrainian military ended a unilateral ceasefire on June 30th.
The pro-Russian separatists, who have added powerful weapons to their arsenal, launched a volley of Grad missiles at around 5am on the border post at Zelenopillya, in Ukraine’s easternmost Luhansk region, military sources said.
“Up to thirty (were killed). It is not excluded that the number of victims will rise because these bloodthirsty scum despicably shot from Grad systems and there is destruction,” Zoryan Shkyryak, an adviser to interior minister Arseny Avakov, told journalists. “I think a response will not be slow in coming after this bloody terrorist act.”
Kiev, which has been trying to take greater control of its border with Russia, blames Moscow for fanning the violence and allowing fighters and high-powered weaponry to cross the frontier from Russia to Ukraine.
The attack comes after government forces appeared to be gaining the upper hand in a three-month battle with separatists who have set up ‘people’s republics’ in the Russian-speaking east of the country and said they want to join Russia.
Last weekend Kiev scored a notable victory by pushing rebels out of a stronghold in Slovyansk and forced them back to the industrial city of Donetsk, where they have now dug in.
Mr Poroshenko’s government has threatened a “nasty surprise” to drive rebels out of Donetsk, the region’s industrial hub with a population of 900,000, while pledging to limit civilian casualties.
In Donetsk’s main railway station, people said they had been waiting in line for two hours to buy tickets to flee the city, which they feared would suffer the same destruction as Slovyansk did during fighting.
Separatist leader Alexander Borodai told journalists yesterday that 70,000 residents had already left the city.
“We decided yesterday to leave the city and immediately got ready,” said Nadezhda Avramenko (55), a housewife sitting on the train platform with her family.
Elsewhere in the Luhansk region, four servicemen were killed when their armoured personnel vehicle detonated a mine, said military spokesman Andriy Lysenko. A soldier was also killed in the town of Karlovka in Donetsk province.
Separately, at least five miners died and another five were injured when their bus came under fire from the rebels, Mr Lysenko said.
Reuters