MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/. Ukrainian forces have violated ceasefire regime in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic six times over the last 24 hours, DPR defense ministry spokesman Eduard Basurin said on Saturday.
"The enemy fired six mortar mines and four more mines from automatic grenade launchers," Donetsk News Agency quoted Basurin as saying.
He added that Ukrainian snipers opened fire at the Zaytsevo settlement near Gorlovka. "In the morning, this settlement was shelled, and three residential houses were damaged," Basurin said.
A source in DPR law enforcement said earlier today that Kiev forces shelled Zaytsevo in the afternoon injuring one woman.
On December 22 the Contact Group on peaceful settlement of conflict in Donbass agreed at the meeting in Minsk to "fully and unconditionally" observe the ceasefire regime since 12am on December 23.
However, over the last weeks DPR defense ministry registered the growing number of shellings near Gorlovka and in Donetsk’s northern and western outskirts. Deputy Chief Monitor of the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Alexander Hug said that Donetsk’s outskirts and Gorlovka remain the "hot spots" on the contact line in Donbass.
The Minsk accords were signed on February 12 last year, 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 Pyotr Poroshenko.
The Minsk accords envisage ceasefire, weaponry withdrawal, prisoner exchange, local election in Donbass, 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 Lugansk republics have repeatedly accused each other of violating ceasefire and other points of the Minsk agreements.