VIENNA, December 5. /TASS/. The number of violations of ceasefire in eastern Ukraine has considerably increased, the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in its daily update for December 4, citing representatives of the Joint Centre for Control Co-ordination (JCCC).
“Ukrainian and Russian Federation representatives of the reported that the number of ceasefire violations had significantly increased over the last 24 hours, reaching 110 incidents,” says the document posted on the OSCE SMM website on Friday. “A ceasefire for Donetsk airport did not hold and hostilities renewed at 08:00hrs on December 3.”
Describing the situation around the airport, the SMM said it had observed that “shelling in the northern outskirts of the city of Donetsk intensified over the last 48 hours.” “Heavy outgoing artillery and Multiple Rocket Launcher Systems /MLRS/ toward the direction of Donetsk airport have been intermittently used, as directly observed by the SMM,” according to the document.
The report describes an incident that occurred with the mission’s monitors at a Ukrainian checkpoint on a road leading to Lugansk near the settlement of Debaltsevo. “The SMM was not let through as it was told by the checkpoint’s personnel that they had not been instructed to let the SMM proceed farther,” the document says.