At least six Ukrainian servicemen were killed in separatist attacks on Sunday in Ukraine's troubled eastern regions in a grim weekend marking the first anniversary of a rebellion against Kiev's pro-Western rulers.
Four Ukrainian soldiers died when their vehicle was hit by a shell fired by the Russian-backed rebels as it drove across a bridge in the government-held town of Schastye, 170 km (105 miles) north-east of the big regional centre of Donetsk, regional police said.
In a separate incident less than an hour later, a landmine exploded under a military vehicle at Shyrokyne, east of the Sea of Azov city of Mariupol, killing two soldiers and injuring a third, a military spokesman said on the TV channel 112.
The conflict erupted a year ago this weekend when rebels opposed to a new pro-Western leadership in Kiev and the ousting of a Moscow-backed president occupied state buildings in two big cities of Ukraine's Russian-speaking east, Donetsk and Luhansk.
The crisis has now reached stalemate with a ceasefire, brokered by Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France in mid-February still technically in force though deaths are reported almost daily among Ukrainian soldiers, civilians and rebels.
Under an agreement reached in Minsk, Belarus, the warring sides have pulled back heavy military equipment to put their big guns out of range of each other and are working on extending the withdrawal to include tanks and smaller-calibre weapons.
Both sides accuse each other of violating the ceasefire agreed in Minsk despite the pull-back of heavy weapons.
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