Ukraine reports heaviest fighting since Minsk truce

Kiev on August 13 said two soldiers had been killed in the heaviest clashes since the signing of a February truce deal with pro-Russian insurgents in Ukraine's separatist east.

Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov said militants had shelled government positions 153 times across the war zone.
 
Turchynov called the number "an anti-record" that marked the most serious escalation since the signing of the so-called Minsk II accord.
 
"In essence, shelling this intense corresponds to active hostilities," he said in a statement, which echoed similar remarks by other military officials since the weekend.
 
Kiev's pro-Western forces have been fighting the militias for control of a vital highway linking the government-held southeastern port of Mariupol with the separatists' de facto capital Donetsk to the north.
 
Most of the road is currently overseen by pro-Kiev units. If the insurgents captured it, it could potentially allow them to step up their stop-start campaign to capture Mariupol -- a port city of nearly half a million that sits on the western edge of the loosely-defined demilitarisation zone.
 
The industrial port exports most of the east's factory output and provides a land bridge between rebel territories and the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula.
 
On their official news site, the separatists said Kiev shells had killed one civilian and injured three in an attack on Donetsk city itself.
 
They accused government forces of "firing 500 shells and rockets" at rebel positions in the Russian-speaking provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk.
 
The United Nations estimates that the conflict -- sparked by the February 2014 ouster of a Moscow-backed...