Ukraine resumed a military offensive against pro-Russian forces in the country's east on Saturday, as military observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who were held for more than a week were released.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Ukrainian forces had seized control of a television tower in Kramatorsk, near the rebel stronghold of Slovyansk where at least three were killed in fighting on Friday, Reuters reported.
"We are not stopping," Avakov wrote on his Facebook page early Saturday.
News reports claimed additional fighting broke out in the city of Kramatorsk, south of Slovyansk, on Saturday.
Tensions were especially high after at least 42 people died in clashes between government supporters and opponents in the Black Sea port of Odessa on Friday. The clash began with street fighting between two sides in which at least three people were reported killed by gunfire, then turned into a grisly conflagration when government opponents took refuge in a building that caught fire after protesters threw firebombs inside.
The city's police chief, Petr Lutsyuk, issued a statement calling for calm in the city of about 1 million, but hours later he was fired by Avakov.
There were also signs of a desire for revenge. A page appeared on Vkontakte, a Russian analogue of Facebook, showing photos and stating home addresses of people allegedly responsible for the fire deaths. In Donetsk, the largest city in the insurgent east, demonstrators who stormed the local office of the Ukrainian Security Service on Saturday shouted, "We will not forgive Odessa."
Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the bloodshed demonstrated the acting government's tolerance of or collusion with nationalist extremists and had driven efforts to resolve the crisis into a dead end.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said the fatal fire was "yet another manifestation of the criminal irresponsibility of the Kiev authorities who indulge insolent radical nationalists ... which are engaging in a campaign of physical terror" against those in Ukraine who want more autonomy for the pro-Moscow regions.
Meanwhile, insurgent leader Vyacheslav Ponomarev announced Saturday that all seven military observers and their five Ukrainian assistants had been released.
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