At least 29 dead in shelling of Ukrainian port city
At least 29 people were killed Saturday by indiscriminate shelling at a marketplace in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol from an area controlled by Russian-backed rebels, authorities said.
Media reports indicated all but one of the victims were civilians, including women and children. Officials of the Azov Sea port city of more than 450,000 people blamed Russian-backed fighters for the rocket attacks.
"The area that came under attack was massive," Mariupol Mayor Yuriy Khotlubei said. "The shelling was carried out by militants. This is very clearly Russian aggression that has caused terrible losses for the residents of the eastern part of our city."
Ukraine's president called an emergency meeting of his military officials and cut short a trip to Saudi Arabia to rush back to coordinate the government's response.
Ertugrul Apakan, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, called the shelling a "reckless, indiscriminate and disgraceful attack" into a heavy populated residential area.
Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, blamed the "barbaric bombardment" on "the Russian military and the completely controlled gang of terrorists," Ukrinform reported.
Ukraine's Defense Ministry said there were three separate strikes from multiple-rocket launchers Saturday on Mariupol and surrounding areas.
The shelling came a day after the rebels, who controlled large parts of eastern Ukraine, rejected a peace deal and announced they were going on a multi-pronged offensive against the government in Kiev to vastly increase their territory.
The rebel stance has upended European attempts to mediate an end to the fighting in eastern Ukraine, which the U.N. says has killed nearly 5,100 people since April.
The RIA Novosti news agency cited Ukrainian rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko as saying Saturday that an offensive had begun on Mariupol. He spoke as he laid a wreath where at least eight civilians died when a bus stop was shelled in Donetsk, the largest rebel-held city in eastern Ukraine.
Rebel forces have positions within 6 miles of Mariupol's eastern outskirts. Mariupol is a major city between mainland Russia and the Russia-annexed Crimean Peninsula. Heavy fighting in the region in the fall raised fears that Russian-backed separatist forces would try to take over the government-held city to establish a land link between Russia and Crimea.
A peace deal signed in September in the Belarusian capital of Minsk envisaged a cease-fire and a pullout of heavy weapons from a division line in eastern Ukraine. It has been repeatedly violated by both sides, and heavy artillery and rocket barrages have increased the civilian death toll in the last few weeks.
The foreign ministers from Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany agreed Wednesday to revive that division line, but fighting has continued unabated.
Contributing: The Associated Press