Battles rage ahead of Minsk talks

Fighting has surged in eastern Ukraine as government forces and pro-Russian rebels try to make gains ahead of expected peace talks today.
Rebels carried out rocket attacks on a key military base and a residential area in Kramatorsk, officials say, killing at least seven civilians.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s volunteer Azov battalion has launched an offensive against separatists around Mariupol.
More than 5,400 people have died since the conflict began last April.
The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany are due to meet in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Wednesday to hammer out a peace deal after months of fighting.
Russia denies Western and Ukrainian accusations of sending troops and arms to support the rebels and has warned the West that sending arms to Ukraine would worsen the crisis.
US President Barack Obama said on Monday that he had not ruled out supplying “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine if diplomacy failed.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told parliament that the government’s military headquarters at Kramatorsk airfield had been shelled by rebels.
At least seven people were killed and 16 wounded when a residential area was also hit, the government-controlled Donetsk regional administration said. Ten people were injured at the military base, it added.
Kramatorsk, some distance west of the current conflict zone, was the scene of major fighting until July, when pro-Russian separatists retreated.
Local authorities said the rockets were fired from the rebel-controlled Horlivka area, which is about 50km (30 miles) away from the city. The separatists denied firing the rockets.
Julia Dzuba, a resident of Kramatorsk who caught the shelling on film as it neared the apartment she lives in with her young child, told the BBC: “I was online, reading news, and then I heard boom, boom!”
“This is much worse than last summer,” she said. “They are shooting at each other, and we are the ones who suffer.”

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