Shell kills young footballers in crumbling Ukraine ceasefire

Ukraine’s tattered ceasefire came under new strain Wednesday as shelling killed two teenagers playing football in rebel-held Donetsk and President Petro Poroshenko said he was deploying reinforcements to face a threatened separatist offensive.

In another sign of Ukraine’s ever more permanent looking break-up, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced he was cutting subsidies to the rebel Donetsk and Lugansk regions, so as not to finance “terrorists”.

A government source told AFP the measures would include scrapping pensions for hundreds of thousands of people living in separatist areas.

Although large-scale military action has ceased in the ex-Soviet republic since a September ceasefire was signed, sporadic artillery fire is exacting a daily toll, feeding fears that the truce will collapse.

On Wednesday, heavy bombardments raged around Donetsk’s former international airport, where government forces are holding out against besieging separatists. One shell landed in a nearby school football field and killed two boys aged 14 and 18.

AFP journalists saw two corpses covered by a tarpaulin and witnesses said at least four others had been wounded.

International rights group Amnesty International demanded an investigation, saying those responsible must be brought to justice if it were found to constitute a war crime.

In “intensified” shelling elsewhere, two soldiers were killed and nine wounded in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said.

“Also, the delivery of significant amounts of military hardware and personnel from Russia to territory controlled by rebels hasn’t stopped,” the spokesman said, reiterating constant allegations — denied by Moscow — that Russia is actively fighting on the rebel side.

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Russia that more sanctions could be on the way if it failed to change course.

At the same he urged Kiev not to get drawn into “tit-for-tat” action, stressing the “need to continue to take the high road” in terms of sticking to the ceasefire.