Two Ukrainian soldiers killed, nine wounded in Donbas in last day

Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another nine were wounded in the Donbas conflict zone in the last 24 hours, presidential administration spokesman for Anti-Terrorist Operation issues, Colonel Oleksandr Motuzianyk said at a briefing on Tuesday, according to an UNIAN correspondent.

"In the last day, we lost two Ukrainian soldiers, and another nine were injured as a result of military clashes," Motuzianyk said.

According to him, the Ukrainian soldiers were killed by enemy fire in the "B" sector to the west of the militant-held city of Donetsk.

Motuzianyk also commented on the information spread by Ukrainian volunteers that Ukrainian marines had been killed in the "A" sector, which is the northern area of Luhansk region.

"We've got such preliminary information – it happened at around 00:30 local time today. The enemy launched shelling our positions, which are located outside [the Ukrainian-controlled city of] Mariupol, in particular, these are the villages of Lebedynske and Sopyne. According to early reports, two of our soldiers were killed and three were wounded in that shelling. This information is preliminary, details will be announced tomorrow," he said.

Earlier, local media reported that Russian proxies had shelled the outskirts of Mariupol from 152mm self-propelled artillery systems, having killed a Ukrainian marine.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the combined Russian-separatist forces attacked Ukrainian army positions in eastern Ukraine 77 times overnight, using banned artillery systems three times, mortars 20 times, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers 32 times.

On August 23, no Ukrainian soldiers were killed, but one was wounded in the town of Zolote.