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The United Nations said the violence in Ukraine is the worst since a September cease-fire, while a separatist leader threatened to mount a new offensive and warned that he will stop taking government troops prisoner.

About 262 people were killed in the conflict Jan. 13-21, an average of 29 a day, the most deadly period since the truce was signed, the UN said. At least 5,086 have been killed since April, Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a website statement Friday.

The escalating violence has prompted renewed diplomatic efforts to resolve the 10-month crisis, without success so far, amid warnings that time is running out to stop a wider conflict. Separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko said theres no point in negotiating in the format that resulted in the Minsk cease-fire agreement as his forces are on the attack, the Moscow-based Interfax news service reported.

Standoff in Ukraine

Zakharchenkos statement shows that the Minsk accord doesnt work anymore, Mykhaylo Samus, the head of the Prague office of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, said by phone Friday.

Ukraine and its allies in the U.S. and the European Union blame Russia for arming and aiding the rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, while Russia accuses the government in Kiev of a military onslaught against its own citizens. The crisis has sent Russia-U.S. ties to their worst since the Cold War.

Defense Ministry officials in Ukraine reported more than 100 attacks by pro-Russian separatists in the past 24 hours. Three servicemen died and 50 were wounded in that period, while rebels hold more than 600 prisoners, military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev Friday.

Russia has 9,000 troops inside Ukraine, the highest number since the conflict began, and is sending 30 to 40 vehicles with weapons across the border daily, Lysenko said. The government in Moscow on Tuesday dismissed the notion its soldiers are involved as absolute nonsense.

The separatists will no longer take Ukrainian servicemen prisoner, the DAN rebel news service cited Zakharchenko, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic, as saying. Zakharchenko said his forces dont need exchanges of prisoners after a mortar attack killed eight people at a bus stop in Donetsk Thursday, according to DAN, though he did not state what theyd do with captured soldiers. Ukraine denied its troops carried out the bus attack and blamed the rebels.

Its critically important rebel leaders attend talks in the contact group because they signed the Minsk cease-fire, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said in an interview Friday in Davos, Switzerland. The group, which includes representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the separatists, should meet this week to discuss a line of contact, withdrawal of forces, prisoner exchanges and humanitarian issues, he said.

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Ukraine Death Toll Mounts as Rebels Warn of Fresh Offensive