DONETSK, September 03. /ITAR-TASS/. The total losses of the Ukrainian security forces overnight amounted to one plane, three tanks, three artillery pieces, up to 20 armoured fighting vehicles, 20 automobiles, the Information Bureau of separatist militias’ Southeast Army said on Wednesday.

About 80 Ukrainian troops were wounded and killed and seven taken prisoner.

“In the Donetsk area, the fascists are shelling from artillery weapons residential neighbourhoods on the southwest outskirts of Donetsk and in Yenakiyevo. Two civilians have been killed and one injured,” the bureau said.

“In the Luhansk area the South East Army in a fast advance liberated from the fascists Illiriya, Petrovskoye, Shchetovo, Kazakovka, Krasny Kut, Proletarsky, Kamenka” and established control over several other settlements. “The operation to search and destroy enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups and small isolated groups that have failed to back track, finding themselves in the rear of the advancing militia forces, continues,” says the command of the Southeast Army.

“The antiaircraft defense forces have downed a Sukhoi Su-25 plane. Its fall was recorded in the area of the Petrenki settlement. Militia’s recon team has destroyed an infantry fighting vehicle and MT-12 antitank gun in a successful raid on a block post of the security forces south of the Vergunka junction area,” the report says.

“In the Mariupol area, the enemy’s main efforts were concentrated on holding the occupied positions at the approaches to the city, terrain reinforcement and on building fortifications,” the report says.

According to the local residents, Ukrainian security forces’ reconnaissance and sabotage groups in civilian clothes have been active in populated localities near Mariupol.