Three Ukrainian soldiers killed in separatist east: Kiev

Three Ukrainian soldiers were reported killed and two wounded today when their car hit a mine in the former Soviet republic's pro-Russian separatist east.
A military spokesman in Kiev said another three government troops were wounded in separate exchanges of fire near the front separating rebel-run parts of the industrial Lugansk and Donetsk regions from the rest of Ukraine.
The pro-Western authorities in Lugansk said the three soldiers died when a car carrying troops from Ukraine's 80th brigade hit a land mine about 75 kilometres west of the Russian border.
They provided no other details and warned the toll was only preliminary as an investigation was underway.

The insurgents in turn accused Ukraine's forces of wounding two of their soldiers in an overnight attack on the rebels' de-facto capital, Donetsk.
Two civilians were also reported killed on Saturday after one of them set off a trip wire in the Lugansk province.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the UN Security Council on Monday he remained "deeply concerned over the continuing violations of the ceasefire" agreed in February 2015.
A series of periodic truce deals that followed have been able to abate some of the violence but not put a full end to a 23-month conflict hat has claimed more than 9,000 lives.

Ukraine's emergencies ministry has reported special teams cleared the ravaged war zone of more than 44,000 explosive devices by mid-October 2014.
But the two sides and foreign monitors are struggling to estimate how many such indiscriminate weapons remain.
Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of orchestrating the uprising and supporting in with troops and weapons throughout the war.
Moscow denies the charges and claims that the United States was behind the street protests that toppled Ukraine's Russian-backed president in February 2014.