Eleven people were killed and 13 others injured after a shell struck a bus at a roadblock in war-torn eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, highlighting the continuing dangers to civilians as fighting between government forces and pro-Russian rebels intensifies.
The bus was hit while stopped at a Ukrainian-controlled checkpoint near the town of Volnovakha, 30 miles south of the rebel stronghold Donetsk, where it was headed, Donetsk Regional State Administration spokesperson Olena Maliutina told Interfax-Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Abroskyn, head of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry in the Donetsk region, said that seven women and four men were among the dead.
He posted an image on Facebook of the bus following the strike.
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A graphic video published to YouTube hours after the attack and viewed by Mashable shows the shrapnel-riddled bus and several mangled bodies slumped over in their seats with deep wounds to their heads and abdomens visible. We have refrained from sharing the video due to its graphic content.
The injured, including one policeman and a border guard with a concussion, were taken to a local hospital.
Ukraine's Interior Ministry official said the rocket was launched from a missile system known commonly as a “Grad” and hit the bus at 2:15 p.m. local time. He was quick to point the blame at the rebels, who hold positions in nearby Dokuchaevsk, 19 miles northeast of the Volnovakha checkpoint.
A rebel leader in Donetsk suggested Ukrainian forces shelled the checkpoint themselves, calling it a "provocation."
DNR's Purgin suggests Ukrainian forces fired on the bus at their own block post. http://t.co/CKI6JMhDaX— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) January 13, 2015
One report on a rebel website cited their fighters as saying they had not fired rockets in the vicinity of the checkpoint hit.
The fight for the airport intensifies
Meanwhile, the months-long battle for the regional airport in Donetsk sharply escalated on Tuesday, as the air traffic control tower collapsed after reportedly being struck by artillery fire.
Photo of collapsed control tower in Donetsk Airport, #Ukraine. Reportedly, it has been destroyed by two tanks. pic.twitter.com/XjZCw6CwsF— Ukraine Reporter (@StateOfUkraine) January 13, 2015
A Ukrainian military spokesman, Vladyslav Selezniov, told Interfax on Tuesday that “separatists were shelling the tower."
“Today the tower collapsed from the top floor down to the fourth floor," he said, adding that there were no reports of injuries.
The tower fell after rebels delivered an ultimatum to Ukrainian forces embedded inside the airport: Give up, or be destroyed.
#Donetsk rebels gave an ultimatum to Ukrainian troops to leave the new terminal of the airport by 5PM today or be destroyed. #Ukraine— Yury Barmin (@yurybarmin) January 13, 2015
According to the press center of the Ukrainian army operation in the east, the rebels, backed with heavy artillery from Russia and Russian troops, have regularly shelled Ukrainian army positions at the airport, using everything in their arsenal, including "small arms, mortars and artillery systems" in recent days.
Ukrainian military spokesperson Andriy Lysenko said that the Kremlin-backed rebels had resumed attempts to storm the Donetsk airport, but government forces remained somewhat in control.
The Donetsk airport has been considered by both of the warring sides to be a strategic site since the first battle in May that killed scores of rebels, including several Russian citizens who were later discreetly repatriated.
But with the airport all but completely razed, it has since become a symbol of pride for both sides, with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko suggesting government forces would never give it up.
"I am sure that we are defending there the whole of Ukraine," he said last month. "If we give up Donetsk (airport), the enemy will be at Borispil or Gostomel or even in Lviv," he said.
As the rebel's airport ultimatum expired on Tuesday, several Twitter accounts associated with the rebels in Donetsk and its Vostok Battalion boasted that their forces had seized complete control over it. Mashable was unable to confirm their claims.
But a live camera used by Russian state-run media outfit RT.com captured what appears to be a volley of rockets striking the airport after dusk, suggesting a fierce fight was underway.
5,000 people have been killed since April
"In the past 24 hours, one Ukrainian soldier has been killed and another 10 have been injured" in the army operation area in the east, Lysenko said at a press briefing in Kiev, according to Interfax.
In all, nearly 5,000 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since the conflict began in April of last year.
A fragile ceasefire agreed in September has done little to stem the fighting between the two sides. Several meetings between Ukrainian and Russian government representatives and rebel leaders have failed to produce a lasting peace deal. Foreign ministers from Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany took another stab at it in Berlin on Monday, but reported later that no progress had been made.