KIEV, September 02./ITAR-TASS/. Fifteen more Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 49 were wounded in fighting in eastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, the press secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Andrei Lysenko, said on Tuesday.

The council said on August 29 that the Ukrainian armed forces' death toll reached 789 since the beginning of the military operation in eastern Ukraine (April 14).

Militia forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics are conducting an operation at present to force Ukrainian troops away from large cities to give them no possibility to carry out artillery and rocket strikes on densely-populated districts.