Local officials in Eastern Ukraine have accused pro-Russian separatists of shelling a village on the outskirts of the key government stronghold of Mariupol overnight.
Heavy blasts between Sunday night and Monday morning damaged 52 homes in Sartana, only 16 kilometres (10 miles) outside Mariupol, local government representative Stepan Mahsma said on his Facebook account. The shelling hit five homes, killing two civilians and wounding six.
On Monday the Ukrainian prosecutor's office in Donetsk region issued a statement, accusing the Donetsk People's Republic of instigating what it called a "terrorist attack."
The port city of Mariupol is a long-term target for the separatist group known as the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), who have held on to large swathes of land in Ukraine's Donetsk region and declared themselves independent of Ukraine in May, after the country's pro-European Maidan protests toppled pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014.
The group's leader Alexander Zaharchenko has repeatedly threatened to take the city. Towns between rebel-held areas in the Donetsk region and Mariupol, such as the village of Shyrokyne, have been the target of rebel attacks for the last year in attempts to advance on Mariupol itself.
Sartana is closer to the centre of Mariupol than Shyrokyne and other towns which have recently been caught in the crossfire between Ukraine forces and the separatists. A ceasefire agreement in place since February has seen both sides pledge to move heavy arms away from the line of contact to prevent such incidents.
The DNR have not yet commented specifically on the incident at Sartana, however a rebel source did accuse Ukraine of instigating attacks, telling Russian state news agency Itar-Tass on Monday that the Ukrainian military had fired at rebel-held positions 77 times over the last day.
Prior to the attack, Denis Pushilin, a spokesman for the DNR, told pro-rebel news outlet Donetskoe Agentstvo Novostey (DAN) on Sunday that the rebels were "on the verge of returning to full-scale fighting."
The mayor of Mariupol declared a day of mourning on Monday for those killed in the attack and Mariupol-based news site 0629 reports that local government officials travelled to the site of the shelling in Sartana to pay tribute.
Ukrainian defence spokesperson Andriy Lysenko said in a press briefing on Monday that the military lost two servicemen, with seven wounded, over the last 24 hours in the war-torn Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The independent Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observer mission in Ukraine confirmed the attack but did not comment on who was responsible, saying they would publish a more detailed report on Tuesday. "Today, at 10:50... monitors arrived in Sartana to gather information on the ground," they said in a statement. "As of now the [OSCE] has observed 11 craters from, mainly 120 mm shells, 25 houses damaged. There are casualties among civilians."
The Donetsk rebels, as well as the other pro-Russian group in the neighbouring eastern Luhansk region, calling itself the Luhansk People's Republic are considered criminal organisations by the Ukrainian state. Kiev and its western partners maintain that the groups are backed by Russia - an accusation which the Russian government has consistently denied.
Meanwhile tensions also ran high in the south of Ukraine as Russian president Vladimir Putin's visit to the annexed peninsula of Crimea was been condemned by his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page that the visit was "a challenge to the civilised world and a continuation of the plan to escalate the situation."
On Sunday the National Security and Defence Council that advises the Ukrainian president on defence and security told the Independent that by their estimates, Russia had deployed 50,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian border.
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