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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Explosions reported outside Ukraine port

Shelling, rocket fire heard one day into cease-fire

A destroyed Ukrainian army tank is seen Saturday near the village of Lebedynske, on the highway linking Mariupol and Novoazovsk, Ukraine, Saturday. (Associated Press)
Jim Heintz And Laura Mills Associated Press

KIEV, Ukraine – Witnesses in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol reported sustained explosions outside the city, and a volunteer battalion of Ukrainian fighters said Grad rockets were fired at its positions late Saturday, a little more than a day after Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist rebels signed a cease-fire following more than four months of fighting in the country’s east.

The cease-fire had appeared to largely have been holding during much of the day.

But late Saturday, witnesses in Mariupol told the Associated Press by telephone that heavy explosions were coming from the city’s eastern outskirts, where Ukrainian troops retain defensive lines against the rebels.

The volunteer Azov Battalion said on Facebook that their positions were hit by Grad rockets, but did not give details.

Mariupol is a port city of about half a million on the coast of the Sea of Azov. Rebels recently opened a new front on the coast, leading to fears that the separatists were trying to secure a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in March.

Earlier Saturday, the presidents of Ukraine and Russia said the cease-fire was mostly holding, but the truce still appeared fragile as both sides of the conflict claimed violations.

A statement from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s office said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed steps “for giving the cease-fire a stable character” in a telephone conversation Saturday.

But, it said, both leaders assessed the cease-fire as having been “fulfilled as a whole.” A separate Kremlin statement about the call said, “There was a mutual satisfaction with the fact that the sides of the conflict were overall observing the cease-fire regime.”

Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s national security council, told reporters that rebels had fired at Ukrainian forces on 10 occasions Friday night after the cease-fire took effect.

In Donetsk, the largest city controlled by the Russian-backed separatists, the night passed quietly – a rarity after several months of daily shelling in residential areas. But Alexander Zakharchenko, the top separatist leader from Donetsk, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the cease-fire had been violated with two rounds of shelling in the town of Amvrosiivka, about 30 miles southeast of Donetsk.

“At this time the cease-fire agreement is not being fully observed,” he said. He didn’t say when the supposed breach occurred.

Lysenko said Ukrainian forces were strictly observing the cease-fire and suggested that Zakharchenko’s claim was a provocation.

Meanwhile, the International Committee for the Red Cross said on its Twitter account that its workers had tried to deliver food aid to the city of Luhansk, which had endured weeks of heavy fighting, but turned back after shooting northeast of the city. It did not give further details.

Earlier Saturday, the mayor’s office in Donetsk said there had been no reports of shooting or shelling there although some shelling had been heard late Friday afternoon. The city council of the second-largest rebel-held city of Luhansk, which had endured intense fighting for weeks, also reported the night was quiet.

Ukraine, Russia and the Kremlin-backed separatists signed the cease-fire deal Friday in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, in an effort to end more than four months of fighting in the region. The negotiators also agreed on the withdrawal of all heavy weaponry, the release of all prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid to devastated cities in eastern Ukraine.