LUGANSK: Hundreds of pro-Russian gunmen struck a Ukrainian border guard camp with mortar and grenade launchers on Monday in one of the biggest offensives of an insurgency which Washington says is directed by Moscow.
The well-coordinated dawn raid involving rebel snipers perched on rooftops led to a day-long battle at the base on the southern edge of the separatists' stronghold city of Lugansk.
Kiev officials said at least five insurgents were killed and eight servicemen wounded.
An explosion also destroyed a regional administration building used as a headquarters by the rebels.
The separatist region's self-declared "prime minister" Vasyl Nikitin told AFP he personally helped carry away four bodies, two civilians killed as they were walking in a park "one of our fighters and our minister of health".
He described the scene as "a hell", adding that the death toll could rise as there were others who were gravely wounded.
An AFP reporter saw fighters pull the body of one rebel sniper from the roof of a nine-storey apartment block building with his white shirt soaked in blood.
The border guard service said its forces and the rebels agreed to a 30-minute afternoon ceasefire so that both sides' wounded could be evacuated by ambulance.
A spokesman for Ukraine's self-proclaimed "anti-terrorist operation" said the border guards eventually received air cover from fighter bombers that managed to destroy "two mortar crews of militants".
Russia's foreign ministry angrily accused Kiev of "committing another crime against its own people".
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