90 army troops killed in eastern Ukraine

Ukraine’s military says nearly 90 government forces have been killed in the southeastern town of Ilovaysk in the Donetsk region.

Mykhailo Logvinov, a military official in the southeastern region of Zaporizhye, said on Wednesday that the bodies of 87 forces were delivered to a local morgue in the area.

Logvinov said that local forensic experts have identified the remains.

He claimed that the soldiers were surrounded and captured by pro-Russian fighters last month.

Elsewhere in Donetsk, six civilians were killed in government shelling of the town of Yenakiyevo. They died when artillery shells hit a parking lot.

Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking regions in the east have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Moscow forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations to silence the pro-Russians there in mid-April.

Violence intensified in May after the two flashpoint regions of Donetsk and Luhansk held local referendums, in which their residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Ukraine.

Western powers and the Kiev government accuse Moscow of having a hand in the crisis in eastern Ukraine, but Russia denies the accusation.

The unrest in eastern Ukraine has so far claimed the lives of more than 2,600 people while over half a million have been displaced.

DB/MAM/MHB