Four civilians have been killed after rebel forces in eastern Ukraine fired artillery rounds on the government-held town of Avdiyivka, the Kiev-appointed head of Donetsk region said. The Ukrainian military said in a statement Saturday’s shelling had been carried out by rebels using artillery banned under the terms of the Minsk peace deal, Aljazeera reported. “A shell hit the courtyard of a private house. Three women and one man perished,” Pavlo Zhebrivskiy, the Donetsk official, said in a Facebook post on Saturday. Shelling continues in eastern Ukraine despite a ceasefire agreement signed in February 2015 in Minsk that aims to end the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and the rebels. Each side accuses the other of violating the truce.
