The conflict between pro-Ukraine and separatist forces in the east of Ukraine led to one of its bloodiest days yet on Thursday, days before presidential elections due to take place on Sunday.
At least 11 pro-Ukraine forces were killed in a surprise dawn attack on a Ukrainian army checkpoint, apparently by a group of armed separatists. Ukraine's interim president Oleksandr Turchynov put the death toll at 13, while a military source said two of the seriously wounded had also died. Journalists on the scene confirmed they had seen 11 bodies.
About 30 soldiers were injured, including four who remained in critical condition on Thursday afternoon. Adding confusion to the incident was the presence of two Ukrainian helicopters, which arrived after the engagement and may have opened fire, leading many locals to believe the operation had been staged by the Ukrainians against their own forces – something that was reported as fact by the press service for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. It remained unclear whether any soldiers had been killed by "friendly fire" or whether all the casualties were from a separatist attack.
Journalists from the Associated Press met rebels in the town of Horlivkaearly on Thursday morning who said they had just returned from the attack and showed them a seized weapons cache, passports they had removed from dead bodies and an armoured vehicle riddled with bullets.
"We destroyed a checkpoint of the fascist Ukrainian army deployed on the land of the Donetsk Republic," the commander of the Horlivka rebels told the journalists. He said one of his men had also been killed. "The weapons you see here have been taken from the dead, they are trophies," he said, displaying a huge collection of automatic weapons, sniper rifles, rocket grenade launchers and knives.
Ukraine will go to the polls on Sunday in an attempt to draw a line under months of chaos. Former president Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev in February, and since then the interim government has seen the Crimea peninsula annexed by Russia and instability has grown bloodier in the east. On Thursday Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister, demanded an emergency meeting of the UN security council to present what he claimed was proof that Russia is stoking the violence in the east.
graph: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images
Nato has confirmed that an at least partial withdrawal of Russian troops from the border with Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin announced this week, appears to be under way. But Kiev says Moscow is waging a clandestine war by offering military and intelligence support to the rebels in the east. Many in the east have tired of the separatist militias, but as Kiev's ill-fated "anti-terrorism" operation continues in the region, there is also increasing anger and distrust of the Ukrainian government.
At the hospital in Volnovakha, where most of the injured were recuperating, several doctors said the injured soldiers were confused by what had happened and did not understand who had attacked them and why. Ten wounded soldiers left the hospital in the middle of the afternoon in two ambulances, but would not answer questions about where they were being taken or what had happened in the morning.
A man who said he was part of the pro-Kiev forces but did not want to give his name told journalists at the hospital that the people who attacked the checkpoint were "professionals" and that the helicopters had been sent to support them. He had arrived on the scene as backup shortly after the attack.
"I don't know who sent them or what they were doing, I am scared to think of it," he said. He added that the Ukrainians involved were a regiment made up mainly of reservists. In heated exchanges with locals at the hospital, he apologised for the Ukrainian military operation in the east of the country, and said he no longer knew what to believe.
The incident appears to be more proof that the various militias acting on behalf of the separatists are not under central control, and more divisions are opening between rival factions.
