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Ukrainian army shells Spartak, Gorlovka, Shirokino in Donetsk republic — media

According to an agreement reached during the talks of the Contact Group in Minsk, Belarus, the full ceasefire on the line of contact in the Donbas region came into effect on September 1

MOSCOW, November 23. /TASS/. The Ukrainian military has shelled Spartak village near the Donetsk airport, the outskirts of the city of Gorlovka located 40 kilometers from the capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Shirokino village in the south of the republic, local residents told Donetsk News Agency on Monday.

"Until midnight we were shelled by mortars and tanks, assault rifles were firing until morning. Recently, we have tried not to leave our houses without an urgent need," a resident of Spartak village said. The mayor’s office of the Yasinovataya city administration within whose jurisdiction the village is located said there was no information on casualties yet.

For their part, residents of Gorlovka said that the city’s western outskirts had been subjected to shelling over the past 24 hours. "Powerful explosions could be heard in the western part, [the Ukrainian military] was shooting from Dzerzhinsk, mainly from tanks," one of them said.

According to the DPR Defense Ministry, Shirokino village came under mortar fire, which lasted several hours. "The artillery bombardment of Shirokino village in the south of DPR by the Ukrainian army began at about 9 p.m. and ended at around 5 a.m.," the ministry’s spokesman said. According to him, the Ukrainian military launched 53 82-mm and 120-mm mortar projectiles on the DPR territory.

According to an agreement reached during the talks of the Contact Group in Minsk, Belarus, the full ceasefire on the line of contact in the Donbas region came into effect on September 1. However, the DPR Defense Ministry earlier said that the situation in the region had deteriorated. Over the past month, there has been a substantial increase in the number of artillery bombardments of the northern and western outskirts of Donetsk and its suburbs.