Shells hit Donetsk, five more Ukrainian soldiers killed

Artillery attacks on the Ukrainian city of Donetsk killed at least one civilian on Monday while Kiev's military reported that five more Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in clashes with Russian-backed separatists in the east in the past 24 hours.

Municipal authorities in Donetsk said 15 civilians were killed over the weekend by shells, mortars or other missiles that hit residential areas of the city, which is controlled by the separatists.

To the northeast of Donetsk, the rebels kept up attacks to dislodge government forces from the small town of Debaltseve, a strategic rail hub.

On Monday, Kiev military authorities said separatist forces launched more than 100 attacks using artillery, rocket systems and tank fire on Ukrainian positions and residential areas in the past 24 hours.

"As a result of these attacks and military clashes, Ukraine lost five service personnel and another 29 have been wounded," military spokesman Vyacheslav Seleznyov said at a morning briefing.

In central Donetsk, about half a mile from the main square, a shell hit a two-story house in the morning, killing one civilian.

The surge in fighting and the end of a five-month truce prompted NATO's military commander and White House officials to consider sending defensive weapons worth $3 billion to Kiev's forces, The New York Times reported on Sunday. The United States has so far ruled out sending arms, but with economic sanctions appearing to have little effect on Russia, the issue of defensive weapons has been pushed back into discussion, the paper reported.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday her country will not provide weapons to Ukraine and supports negotiations and a diplomatic solution to the conflict between the government in Kiev and Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine. 

"It is my firm belief that this conflict cannot be solved militarily," Merkel said after meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest.

Separately, pro-Russian separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko has announced plans to recruit 100,000 men, the BBC reported on Monday. "Mobilization will start in 11 days' time," Zakharchenko, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, told Donetsk news agency.

The fighting has intensified since peace talks collapsed on Saturday in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. Ukraine's representative and separatist envoys each accused the other of sabotaging negotiations.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which took part in the Minsk negotiations, along with envoys from Ukraine and Russia, said rebel delegates had not been ready to discuss key points of the peace plan. Instead, representatives from the separatist rebels called for a revision of an earlier Kremlin-backed peace plan signed in September that has been the basis of all negotiations, throwing future peace talks into doubt.

European Union foreign ministers agreed last week to extend  economic sanctions — for another six months — against Russia that had been due to expire soon.

Al Jazeera and wire services