MOSCOW, August 17. /TASS/. Ukrainian forces shelled the town of Gorlovka overnight, killing three people and injuring four more, Mayor Roman Khramenkov told Donetsk News Agency on Monday.
"Three people died - men born in 1931, 1942 and 1968. Four more people received injuries of varying severity and were taken to hospital," he said.
Eleven residential houses and a children’s social center were damaged in the shelling, Khramenkov noted adding that Ukrainian forces used heavy weaponry.
Gorlovka became one of the "hot spots" at the contact line in Donbass. Shellings there are registered almost daily, primarily during nighttime. According to the town administration, 164 civilians were killed and 500 more were injured in shellings from January until July in 2015.
The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) defense ministry said that Ukrainian forces intensified shellings at night because violations of ceasefire during nighttime are not registered by observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Minsk agreements on Ukraine
Ceasefire is envisaged by the Minsk agreements on the settlements of the situation in Ukraine. The Minsk accords were signed on February 12, after negotiations in the so-called "Normandy format" in the Belarusian capital Minsk, bringing together Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
The Minsk accords also envisage weaponry withdrawal, prisoner exchange, local elections in Donbas, constitutional reform in Ukraine and establishing working sub-groups on security, political, economy and humanitarian components of the Minsk accords.
The Ukrainian forces and the self-defense forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics have repeatedly accused each other of violating ceasefire and other points of the Minsk agreements.