Fighting picks up in war-torn eastern Ukraine

Fighting has picked up in eastern Ukraine, after more than a month of relative calm, as diplomats gathered in Berlin today to discuss the Ukraine crisis.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said yesterday that its mission observed an intense clash with the use of tanks and heavy artillery as well as grenade launchers and mortars in the north of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
On Sunday alone, the OSCE recorded at least 1,166 explosions, caused mainly by artillery and mortar shell strikes in northern Donetsk as well as on its outskirts including the airport, now obliterated by fighting.

The OSCE also reported intense mortar fire outside the village of Shyrokyne by the Azov Sea but said its representatives were repeatedly barred from accessing the village on Sunday.
Mortar fire was also heard at night and today in central Donetsk.
Rebel officials as well as Ukrainian and Russian colonels in charge of monitoring the cease-fire went early Monday afternoon to the northern outskirts of Donetsk, a scene of heavy fighting Sunday night.

The rebels showed journalists a Ukrainian soldier they took captive and the charred car hit by shrapnel from a projectile that landed nearby which, they said, injured two journalists who were inside. Intermittent shelling and exchanges of machine gun fire were heard from what appeared to be half a mile from the scene.

One Ukrainian soldier was killed and six more wounded in eastern Ukraine in 24 hours, Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, military spokesman for the Ukrainian presidential administration, told reporters at noon today, while the rebels reported four wounded.
The military conflict between Russian-backed rebels and government forces has killed more than 6,000 but had largely subsided since the cease-fire was announced in February and at least some heavy weaponry withdrawn.
Both the OSCE and Ukrainian officials said they had witnessed shelling from heavy weaponry that was supposed to have been withdrawn from the front line.
Col. Andriy Leshchynskiy, a Ukrainian representative for monitoring the cease-fire in the east, blamed the clashes on "a highly emotional state and personal animosity" between the fighters on both sides, according to the Interfax news agency.

Rebels and government forces are still separated only by hundreds of meters at some sections of the front line.
Foreign policy chiefs from Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany are meeting to discuss the crisis in Ukraine later today.