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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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14May16
Ukrainian army shells DPR territory 172 times per day - Defense Ministry
Ukraine's army has shelled the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) from armaments prohibited by the Minsk Agreements 172 times over the past day, the DPR Defense Ministry told the Donetsk News Agency on Saturday.
"Over the past day, Ukraine's army has shelled the republic's territory 172 times," a ministry spokesman said.
According to the ministry, overall, during the shellings, the Ukrainian side fired 38 shells from 82-millimeter and 120-millimeter caliber mortars. Fire was also delivered from grenade launchers and small arms. The inhabited localities of Zaytsevo and Krutaya Balka near Gorlovka, Yasinovataya and Dokuchayevsk, as well as the village of Sakhanka in the south of the DPR came under shelling. Besides, under fire from the Ukrainian army were the northern and western outskirts of Donetsk.
Participants of the Contact Group on settlement of the situation in eastern Ukraine on April 29 agreed on the occasion of the Orthodox Easter to establish a regular "regime of silence" starting from midnight April 30. But the militia and Kiev's army keep accusing each other of truce violations.
Since the fall of 2014, when the parties to the conflict first sat down to the negotiating table in the Belarusian capital Minsk, there have been seven of them.
The previous time the sides agreed to stop fire was in January 2016. At talks in Minsk on January 13, 2016, the Contact Group on settlement in Donbass agreed on a ceasefire - the seventh since the conflict start, from January 14. Both parties to the conflict have repeatedly accused each other of violating the deal.
Participants of the Contact Group on settlement of the situation in Donbass on February 12, 2015 signed in Minsk the Package of Measures on implementation of the Minsk Agreements, earlier agreed with members of the Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine).
The document, dubbed "Minsk-2", envisions in particular pardon through enactment of a law forbidding persecution and punishment of people in relation to events in Donbass, cessation of fire, withdrawal of heavy armaments from the contact line.
It also stipulates start of dialogue on restoration of social and economic ties of Kiev and Donbass, as well as reform of the Ukrainian constitution aimed at decentralization and strengthening of the "special status of separate districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions".
[Source: Itar Tass, Moscow, 14May16]
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