Rocket fire kills five in Ukraine

DONETSK, Ukraine – Rocket salvoes hit a previously safe section of Ukraine’s rebel stronghold of Donetsk on Wednesday, killing at least five people and damaging a hospital, six schools and five kindergartens, rebels said.

The fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government troops in eastern Ukraine escalated sharply in January, with more than 220 civilians killed in the past three weeks alone, according to the United Nations. The world body has sharply criticized both sides for indiscriminate shelling that is causing civilian deaths.

The rebel-run Donetsk News Agency, citing police, reported five people killed by shelling around the hospital in the city’s western Tekstilshchik district. City officials in Donetsk said the number of casualties could not immediately be established.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene shortly after the attack found one body covered by a sheet on the ground near a crater from a projectile. The hospital was damaged by shrapnel and its windows were shattered.

“There were six or seven explosions,” witness Vladimir Oryol said. “We fell on the ground, people were screaming. In fact, it was very scary and horrible.”

Separatist official Eduard Basurin told reporters that four civilians had been killed in the past day before Wednesday’s shelling. In Kiev, military spokesman Vladislav Seleznev said two Ukrainian troops have been killed and 18 injured in the past 24 hours.

A spokesman for Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that the U.N. Secretary-General condemned indiscriminate shelling and called on both sides in the conflict to immediately move their military positions away from densely populated civilian areas.