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East Ukraine militias claim Right Sector radicals attack Ukrainian marines near Mariupol

One armored personnel carrier and two trucks were destroyed in the fight that followed

MOSCOW, February 1 /TASS/. Militants from Ukraine’s Right Sector radical nationalist movement and Ukraine’s Interior Ministry police units have attacked Ukrainian marines in an outskirt of Mariupol, a Ukrainian government-controlled city on the Azov Sea, Eduard Basurin, a spokesperson for the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), said on Monday referring to intelligence data obtained by the republic’s intelligence service.

"On January 28, a group of Right Sector militants jointly with Ukraine’s Interior Ministry police units attacked a column of the 36th marine brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. One armored personnel carrier and two trucks were destroyed in the fight that followed. There were dead and wounded from both sides. Police and army leaders arrived at the scene," the Donetsk News Agency quoted Basurin as saying.

According to the DPR Defense Ministry, Right Sector provocateurs had organized the attack. They had wrongly informed the police headquarters that the DPR forces had allegedly broken the line of contact in the Mariupol direction.

"Nikolai Poboiny, the head of the Mariupol national police department of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, issued a personal order to set up an ambush. For the moment, the army and law enforcement bosses are doing everything to prevent the fact from leaking into the media. The wounded soldiers have been taken to hospitals in the country’s central regions," Basurin added.

The DPR Defense Ministry has reported numerous clashes among various Ukrainian army and law enforcement units in Donbass. Shooting incidents between servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces and various voluntary units have been reported in the directions of Gorlovka, Donetsk and Mariupol.