Ukraine fighting at lowest level

Fighting in eastern Ukraine has fallen to its lowest level since the conflict started, Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak said on Tuesday.

Poltorak said Ukrainian forces were coming under attack just two to four times a day - the lowest rate in the past year and a half, BBC reported.

The reduction in violence comes a week after the latest ceasefire agreement came into force on September 1.

"We come under two to four attacks a day, this is the lowest number of shootings over the past year-and-a-half," Poltorak said.

At least 7,962 people have been killed and 17,811 injured since fighting broke out in Ukraine in April last year, the UN said on Tuesday.

Separatists seized large swathes of Donetsk and Luhansk in mid-April 2014, a month after Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula amid international condemnation of the move.