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Ukrainian forces shell LPR positions at night — people’s militia

No one was injured in the shelling

© AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File

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Russian official: Donbass security is impossible without political settlement

MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. Kiev forces have shelled the positions of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) in the evening on Wednesday, LPR people’s militia said on Thursday.

"Fire was opened from the settlement of Luganskoye at the village of Kalinovka from infantry fighting vehicles, automatic grenade launchers and heavy machine guns," Lugansk Inform Center quoted LPR people’s militia as saying.

LPR people’s militia noted that no one was injured in the shelling.

Ukrainian forces shell Makeyevka damaging gas pipeline and power lines

Kiev forces have shelled parts of Makeyevka last night damaging residential houses, a gas pipeline and power lines, the town’s acting mayor Valery Lyakhovets said on Thursday.

"The situation is being managed right now, services are working, and special commissions went to the scene to register everything and verify the damage. Since it happened at night, at 1:30am, the information is being verified. What is known at the moment is that a gas pipeline, power lines and residential houses were damaged," Donetsk News Agency quoted Lyakhovets as saying.

Infrastructure of Chernogvardeysky and Kirovsky districts was damaged, the mayor’s office said. "No one was killed," a mayor’s office representative said adding that one person was injured in the shelling.

The defense ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have gone to the scene.

At the meeting of the Contact Group at the start of January the sides supported the initiative of Russia’s envoy Boris Gryzlov on ensuring complete ceasefire on the territory of Donbass. This is the seventh attempt to fully observe the ceasefire regime in Ukraine’s south-east. At the recent meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk the participants expressed regret over continuing violations of ceasefire regime in Donbass.

Ceasefire is envisaged by the Minsk accords signed on 12 February 2015, 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 package of measures also envisages 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.

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