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Kiev military launch more than 200 shells, destroy house in Donbass

"The enemy launched 216 shells from weapons of 122mm caliber, tank weapons, mortars of 82 and 120mm", said the republic’s defense authorities

DONETSK, October 23. /TASS/. The Kiev military during the past night launched 216 shells on territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the republic’s defense authorities said on Sunday.

"Between 18:30 and 23:30, the Ukrainian side shelled Staromikhailovka, Alexandrovka and Trudovskiye west of Donetsk, the areas near Yasinovataya and Krutaya Balka," the Donetsk News Agency quoted the source. "The enemy launched 216 shells from weapons of 122mm caliber, tank weapons, mortars of 82 and 120mm."

Head of the Sakhanka village’s administration Igor Nagorny said a house was ruined in the shelling. Luckily, nobody was inside the house during the shelling, he added.

On August 26, the parties to the Contact Group for settling the armed civil conflict in eastern Ukraine made a yet another, ninth, attempt to attain ceasefire. The agreement they reached suggests the ceasefire takes effect as of September 1. However, the Ukrainian side keeps on shelling DPR’s settlements. The DPR has been daily reporting more than 100 episodes of shelling with the use of weapons of 120mm and 122mm caliber.

Despite the ongoing provocations, the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics, the DPR and LPR (Lugansk People’s Republic), on September 13 banned their servicemen to open retaliatory fire in response to provocations from Ukrainian troops. On the following day, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after talks in Kiev that Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko had also guaranteed Ukraine’s readiness to observe truce in Donbass.

The Package of Measures to fulfil the September 2014 Minsk agreements, known as Minsk-2, that was signed in Minsk on February 12, 2015, envisaged a ceasefire regime between Ukrainian government forces and people’s militias in the self-proclaimed republics in Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR) starting from February 15, 2015 and a subsequent withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of engagement. The deal also laid out a roadmap for a lasting settlement in Ukraine, including local elections and constitutional reform to give more autonomy to the war-torn eastern regions.