At Least 10 Killed in Rocket Attack on Port City in Eastern Ukraine

DONETSK, Ukraine — Rockets struck homes and a market in the Azov Sea port city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least 10 people. It was the latest indication that after a relative lull last fall the war has flared up again in eastern Ukraine.

On a street, a car burned and spewed black smoke, and smoke also rose from at least one other site in the city, photographs posted on social networking sites showed. The newspaper Ukrainian Pravda reported that “fighters are shelling Mariupol and people are fleeing.”

The authorities often alter casualty figures in the hours after an attack so it was unclear on Saturday afternoon whether the strike would carry much significance in the broader context of the increased fighting in recent days.

A main rebel leader, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, said Friday that Russian-backed separatists intended to go on the “offensive” to expand the boundaries of the separatist territory and prevent Ukraine’s army from shelling populated areas, like the city of Donetsk.

Armed with what appeared to be new tanks and other heavy weapons from Russia, rebels in recent days captured the ruins of the Donetsk airport and the village of Krasny Partizan, and were on the march throughout the region. Russia denies supplying the rebels.

The police in Mariupol, which is under Ukrainian control but near the front line, and a battalion of pro-Ukrainian volunteer fighters based there said the city had been attacked with Grad rockets.

A police spokesman, Vyacheslav Abroskin, told Ukrainian media that at least 10 people had been killed in the artillery strike on the seaside city, a major steel industry center for Ukraine.

The volunteer militia helping to fortify the city of about 400,000 residents, the Azov Battalion, posted a statement apparently intended to tamp down panicky rumors that the strike signaled the beginning of a rebel ground assault on the city, the largest in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian rule.

“Ukrainian forces fully control Sector M,” the statement said, referring to the section of the front around Mariupol. “The enemy is indeed gradually building up the intensity and power of artillery strikes, however they are not prepared for a full-scale assault of our part of the front.”

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