
We're watching the live video feed from a camera locked on Donetsk International Airport, and once again occasional shelling can be heard. In fact, shelling has been reported for much of the last few hours or so.
As we've been reporting since the 'truce' was supposed to go into effect yesterday, there hasn't been anything that resembles a truce in the last two days.
Earlier the Ukrainian government said that the ceasefire was immediately violated by the Russian-backed separatists. Gulliver Cragg, who is in Donetsk, reports that the separatist leadership is making the opposite claim.
The separatist leaders didn't know who negotiated the truce? Yesterday, news reports said that the truce was negotiated between Russian representatives and Ukrainian ones. Does this mean that the separatists were not part of the negotiations?
Interfax-Ukraine reports that the Donetsk regional branch of the Interior Ministry has announced that four civilians, amongst them a 6-year-old child, have been wounded after the village of Orlovka was shelled today.
One man was wounded by shrapnel on his 52nd birthday. A 27-year-old woman suffered eye injuries.
The report says that the wounded were taken from the village, in the Yasinovataya district, to a hospital in Avdeyevka.
The Interior Ministry said that the shelling was conducted by Russian-backed militants.
-- Pierre Vaux
In a daring piece of journalism, the BBC's Fergal Keane has visited the front lines of fighting at the Donetsk International Airport. The minute his vehicle arrived, shelling could be heard and the crew scrambled out of the vehicle. Keane turns to the camera, the sound of shelling in the background, and says "there is no ceasefire, it's an illusion."
The BBC then shows video of the shelling from a residential neighborhood which we reported earlier this week, and a hospital where civilians injured in the fighting are being treated. Near the front lines, residents are living in basements to avoid the near-constant shelling.
The entire video can be viewed here and covers the economic realities in Donetsk as well.
One other interesting note -- the BBC saw tanks parked against residential buildings, but were not allowed to film them. They did snap this picture, however:
-- James Miller
UNIAN reports that the press office of Hennadiy Moskal, the governor of the Lugansk region, has announced that the government-held town of Stanitsa Luganskaya, to the north-east of separatist-held Lugansk, is now without electricity or gas following shelling.
According to Moskal's office, Russian-backed forces shelled the town and the neighbouring village of Valuyskoye last night with Grad rockets.
The Interpreter translates:
In Valuyskoye, five houses were damaged by shells. The militants stole into Stanitsa Luganskaya and fired on a number of administrative buildings with automatic weapons. Several windows at the district administration building were smashed, including that of the office of the chairman of the district administration, Yevgeniy Bidashko.
In addition, a gas pipeline was damaged by the fighting. There is now no central gas supply in a large part of Schastye and also the villages of Valuyskoye, Malinovoye and Pshenichnoye (affecting a population of around 10 thousand in total). Due to the low gas pressure, heating boilers are not turning on.
Meanwhile, the ATO Press Centre reported this morning that attacks had been launched on Ukrainian positions at several locations in the Lugansk region, including Schastye, and Verkhnaya Olkhovaya.
-- Pierre Vaux