Violence increasing in eastern Ukraine: OSCE

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which monitors the situation in eastern Ukraine, on Thursday said it recorded a "massive increase" of violence in the restive areas in the past days.

"This increase is not just reckless but even worst -- it's irrational. The intensity of violence reminds me of the worst days of the conflict. It makes a mockery of the ceasefire," Alexander Hug, the deputy chief monitor of the OSCE special monitoring mission (SMM) to Ukraine, told reporters in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

The confrontation between government troops and pro-independence rebels in the past two days has concentrated near the destroyed Donetsk airport and in the outskirts of Gorlovka city, Hug said.

The increase of violence is particularly alarming in the light of the fact that both sides of the conflict have not fully withdrawn their heavy weapons from the frontline as prescribed in the Minsk ceasefire agreement, he added.

"The failure of the sides to withdraw the prescribed weapons is evident. Our monitoring, in fact, continues to show an approximately 30 percent discrepancy between declared weapons and actual SMM observations," Hug said.

There were no reports of insurgent or civilian casualties in the past day. According to Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko, over the past 24 hours, one government soldier was wounded in clashes with rebels, but there were no other fatalities.

Fighting has been raging in Ukraine's restive east since April 2014, claiming the lives of more than 9,000 people.

In recent months, fighting has significantly eased despite sporadic clashes after the warring sides declared a comprehensive ceasefire in the conflict-torn eastern regions in September 2015. Endit