Ukraine’s military on Friday reported the death of 23 servicemen in clashes across the separatist east that threatened to shatter slim Western hopes of a truce in the three-month insurgency.
“In the past 24 hours, while performing special assignments in various regions where the active phase of anti-terrorist operations is underway, 23 servicemen from the Ukrainian armed forces and state border service were killed,” spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov wrote in a Facebook post.
The official spokesman of Ukraine’s intensifying campaign against pro-Russian rebels added that 93 troops had sustained “wounds and contusions of varying severity”.
Ukraine’s defence ministry said in a separate statement that the toll included 19 troops who were killed early on Friday in a multiple rocket attack staged by the insurgents near the Russian border.
Friday’s official death toll is the highest since Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko tore up a brief ceasefire with the rebels on July 1 and relaunched an offensive that managed to dislodge the militias from key eastern strongholds they have controlled for nearly three months.