LUHANSK, July 28. /ITAR-TASS/. Militias in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) have killed 23 Ukrainian servicemen over the past 24 hours, the UNIAN news agency said on Monday.

The Ukrainian army’s territorial battalion Aidar was taking part in three different operations in the south-east of the country and each of its groups sustained losses, 23 servicemen in all, the news agency quoted the battalion’s social network account as saying.

The Ukrainian army continues to shell cities in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, the DNR communications committee said on Monday.

It said the Ukrainian army was using Grad multiple launch rocket systems and phosphorus ammunition.

The committee also said the Ukrainian army had used cluster bombs in attacks on the town of Shakhtersk.

Since early April, the Ukrainian military operation in the east of the country has caused the death of 1,129 people and 3,500 were injured, a report of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said. 

More than half of the casualties are peaceful civilians. The number of displaced persons who stay in the country has reached 101,600 - 86% of them fled violence in the country’s east, the reports said.