UKRAINIAN anti-fascist fighters accused the Kiev government of terrorism on Saturday after Lugansk People’s Militia commander Oleg Anashchenko was killed in his car.

Commander Anashchenko died in an explosion along with an unnamed person, the Lugansk Information Centre reported, blaming Ukraine’s special services for the blast.

Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the anti-fascist military command in Donetsk, reported scores of mortar and tank firings by government forces yesterday after Kiev stepped up military action last week.

Ukraine’s military said that two of its soldiers had been wounded in fighting with rebels in the east, but it claimed that artillery attacks were significantly lower after a week in which fighting had surged. It had earlier reported three soldiers killed in artillery exchanges.

A sharp escalation in fighting has killed at least 33 people, centring on Avdiivka, a government-held town just north of rebel-controlled Donetsk.

Nearly 180 homes in the town of 35,000 people were damaged in shelling, according to Donetsk region government official Pavlo Zhebrivsky.

More than 9,800 have died in fighting between troops and anti-fascist fighters for regional autonomy since April 2014.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke late on Saturday with US President Donald Trump, who he said expressed “deep concern” over the escalation.

The surge in violence began the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with President Trump for the first time since he entered the White House.

President Poroshenko has used the outburst of fighting as an argument for continuing Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its alleged actions in Ukraine.

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