Toll soars as Ukraine-Russia fight resumes; more MH-17 remains found

Ukrainian authorities claimed Friday that government forces killed as many as 200 pro-Russia gunmen in the previous 24 hours and that Moscow had sent in an armored column including 32 tanks and 30 truckloads of fighters.

The reported fatalities, which would be the highest one-day death toll in the 7-month-old war in eastern Ukraine, couldn’t be independently verified.

Reports of intensified fighting across separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine threatened to force another suspension of the just-resumed investigation at the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash site, where more remains of victims were found Thursday.

Fierce fighting has resumed in the Donetsk region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian government troops since April. Artillery exchanges and armed militants manning checkpoints near the crash site forced a Dutch-led investigation of the disaster to suspend work in mid-August, less than a week after the forensics teams had managed to get to the site.

“Several bodies of victims were found there yesterday,” a spokeswoman for the separatist government, Ella Zhuranskaya, told Russia’s TASS news agency.

MH-17, with 298 people on board, shattered and plunged to the ground on July 17 as it traveled from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. Most of the passengers were Dutch citizens, many headed to an international AIDS conference in Australia.

The Dutch investigators had arrived earlier this week on a mission to collect debris from the crashed Boeing 777 to reconstruct the aircraft in hopes of learning more about what brought it down from an altitude of more than 33,000 feet. A preliminary report by the Dutch government said the plane was struck by “high-energy objects,” presumably an anti-aircraft missile.

The high-altitude explosion spread debris and remains across several square miles around the village of Hrabove, east of the area of Donetsk where pro-Russian militants have been engaged in a protracted fight for the city’s once-bustling airport since May. Battles are also raging just to the north of the crash site, around the strategic crossroads of Debaltseve, bordering the Luhansk region that is also under separatist control.

It was through the Luhansk region that the nearly 80-vehicle armored convoy entered eastern Ukraine on Thursday, Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told reporters in Kiev on Friday.

“Military vehicles, including 32 tanks, 16 D-30 howitzers and 30 KamAZ trucks with ammunition and manpower were sighted yesterday moving from Russia in the direction of Krasny Luch in Luhansk region,” Lysenko said, adding that mobile radar stations were also among the military hardware sent in.

Russia has previously sent in at least two other armored columns, according to the Ukrainian government and NATO satellite surveillance.

Lysenko also made the claim at his daily briefing that government forces had “eliminated” as many as 200 separatists in the battle over the airport.

“According to verified information, as a result of a fire raid, four tanks of separatists were destroyed or damaged, as well as two armored vehicles, two D-30 howitzers, one infantry combat vehicle and up to 200 militants,” he said. Lysenko added that five Ukrainian solders were killed during the same 24-hour period.

Since fighting between the Russia-backed separatists and government troops and militias flared, more than 4,000 people have been killed in the conflict regions, including more than 400 since a cease-fire was purportedly put into effect on Sept. 5.

Separatists on Sunday held elections for leaders of their seized territories in defiance of calls from the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to refrain from conducting illegal polls for fear they would further undermine the cease-fire.

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