REUTERS
Six Ukrainian soldiers were killed and fourteen were wounded in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine on Friday, presidential administration speaker for ATO issues Andriy Lysenko said in Kyiv on Saturday.
"In the past 24 hours, six Ukrainian soldiers were killed and fourteen were wounded in hostilities, shelling and skirmishes," he said.
The positions of the Ukrainian troops in the ATO zone were shelled 40 times overnight alone, the ATO press center reported on Saturday.
The village of Opytne, the town of Avdiyivka, Butivka coal mine and the village of Pisky near the destroyed Donetsk airport were shelled from 122mm-caliber howitzers, mortars of different calibers, grenade launchers, and small arms.
An earlier agreed ceasefire near the Ukrainian-controlled city of Mariupol did not last long, the press center said. At about two o'clock in the morning, militants started shelling the village of Chermalyk, which is 30-35 km far from Mariupol, using 120mm-caliber mortars.
The Luhansk sector was also under fire: the village of Kyrmske was shelled twice – militants used grenade launchers, anti-aircraft systems and guns of infantry combat vehicles.