DONETSK, Ukraine — After days of intense fighting, Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine claimed Monday they had seized control of Donetsk airport once again. The Ukrainian military denied this but acknowledged that the fighting for the rubble-strewn trophy had been fierce.
Three Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 66 wounded in the previous 24 hours, military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev, but he would not say how many of those casualties occurred at the airport.
Donetsk airport, reduced to rubble in the fighting since May, is of limited strategic importance in the short term but has great symbolic value. In the longer term, the government fears the separatists could use the airport, located north of the main rebel-held city, to expand their control over eastern Ukraine and create an air supply route with Russia.
The separatists increased the stakes last week by successfully taking over large sections of the airport. The Ukrainians then unleashed a counter-offensive.
"All attempts of the Ukrainian army to take the airport and to get revenge for the defeat of the last year... have failed," rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko told reporters Monday in Donetsk. He accused Ukraine of using rocket and artillery fire with an intensity that rebel forces had "never experienced before."
Lysenko, however, said the weekend fighting had returned control over the airport to the military.
It was impossible independently to determine whose forces were in control.
The city of Donetsk was shaken by heavy artillery fire over the weekend as the airport battle raged. On Monday, a shell hit the city's Central Clinical Hospital No. 3, blowing out windows but causing no deaths. All the patients were evacuated to other hospitals. Sporadic explosions were also heard Monday from the direction of the airport.
Read Tuesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.