LUGANSK: Rebel strongholds in eastern Ukraine braced for more fighting on Wednesday as Western leaders piled more pressure on Kiev to strike a truce with pro-Russian separatists.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a telephone call urged the Western-backed President Petro Poroshenko to move toward a political solution and said he promised to exercise "restraint" in the continuing drive to establish control in eastern Ukraine.
Poroshenko said however that the rebels were still receiving weapons from Russian territory and lamented a "lack of progress" in even agreeing the next round of talks with Moscow.
In Lugansk one of two regional capitals still held by the insurgents the streets were deserted and an AFP team heard regular artillery fire to the north of the city with shooting seeming to be focused around the rebels' military headquarters.
Ukrainian defence ministry said that troops had to repel a rebel attack on the Lugansk airport.
"Let them bomb us, let them kill us," said a distraught local resident called Olga. "We have nowhere to go. Where could we go?" asked her husband Yevgeny.
The couple said they were trying to get their young son out of town as he was too scared to sleep at night.
Three people were killed in the city and five injured in the past 24 hours, local authorities said.
Another three servicemen were killed and four injured in clashes across east Ukraine in the same period, Kiev's National Security and Defence Council said on Wednesday.
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