Casualty among Ukrainian soldiers rises despite truce

The casualty among Ukrainian government soldiers fighting pro-independence rebels in the country's east regions keeps rising despite the truce deal reached last month, a military spokesman said here Wednesday.

"In the past 24 hours we have lost one serviceman, and 5 others were injured," Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the government's military operation in eastern Ukraine, told reporters.

Although the ceasefire deal has helped reduce the number of rebel attacks and there was no artillery shelling of government positions in the past day, insurgents now deploy snipers to fire at Ukrainian forces, Lysenko said.

According to the spokesman, several villages in the eastern direction from the government-controlled port city of Mariupol had been the flashpoints of fighting on the previous day.

Meanwhile, insurgents blamed Ukrainian troops for shelling their positions near Donetsk city, the main rebel bastion, with heavy artillery.

The Ukrainian forces and the rebel leadership have repeatedly accused each other of attacks and violation of the peace deal signed on Feb. 12 in Minsk, capital of Belarus.

The agreement, which calls for comprehensive truce and withdrawal of all heavy weapons from the frontline of fighting, is designed to put an end to the conflict that had killed over 6,000 people since April 2014. Endite