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Donetsk airport comes under heavy shelling - Donetsk official

MOSCOW, May 16. /TASS/. Donetsk airport has come under heavy shelling, head of the administration of the city’s Kievsky and Kuibyshevsky districts said on Saturday.

"An area nearby the Donetsk airport has been bombarded for over two hours," the Donetsk news agency quoted Ivan Prikhodko as saying.

Also, Prikhodko has said that no detailed information is available yet while information about casualties and destruction has being verified.

At the beginning of this week, Ukraine’s President Pyotr Poroshenko claimed that Donetsk airport controlled by the militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) would be re-taken.

"I have no doubts that we will free the airport as it is our land and we will restore the airport," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Poroshenko against the attempts to regain control over the Donetsk airport.

The agreement to stop hostilities in the southeast was brokered at the talks of the Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine) leaders on the Ukrainian issue in the Belarusian capital Minsk on February 12. Simultaneously, regular talks of the Contact Group were held in Minsk on February 10-12.

The talks ended by adoption of a 13-point package of measures, which contained in particular a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons, as well as measures on long-term political settlement of the Ukraine crisis, including enforcement of a special self-rule status for certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

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