UNITED NATIONS, October 1. /TASS/. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is alarmed by reports of increased violence in Ukraine in the past few days and especially concerned about reports that a school was shelled in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Ban’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.

Such actions as deliberate shelling of schools are inadmissible under any circumstances, Dujarric told a TASS correspondent, adding that the parties to the Ukrainian conflict should stick to commitments in the framework of the memorandum signed in Minsk on September 20 to ensure a stable ceasefire regime and seek a political solution to the Ukrainian crisis.

Earlier, the press service of the Donetsk city council said nine people had been killed as a result of city shellings and 30 injured on Wednesday. In particular, three people - the biology teacher and two parents - died when school No. 57 came under fire; five people received fragmentation wounds.

“The shockwave broke the window frames of the first and second floors; fragments damaged the building’s faзade and interior,” the city hall said.

Clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics, have claimed some 3,500 lives, according to the UN, and forced hundreds of thousands to flee Ukraine’s war-torn southeast.

Talks mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Minsk saw the parties to the Ukrainian conflict agree on cessation of fire and exchange of prisoners. The ceasefire took effect the same day but reports said it has occasionally been violated.

On September 20 in Minsk, the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine comprising representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE adopted a memorandum outlining the parameters for the implementation of commitments on the ceasefire in Ukraine laid down in the Minsk Protocol of September 5.