Ukrainian rebels claim responsibility for port city attack

Eastern Ukrainian rebels have claimed responsibility for an attack against the port city of Mariupol that left 30 people dead and many more injured.

Aleksandr Zakharchenko, a rebel leader, told residents of Donetsk on Saturday that the “battle for Mariupol”, a government-held city, has begun.

However another rebel leader, Denis Pushilin, blamed Ukrainian forces for the deadly attacks.

International organisations, including the EU, have condemned the recent attack, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe have described it as “reckless, indiscriminate and disagraceful”.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has called for a special UN Security Council meeting to discuss what he claims is Russia's role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

"Russia is not only breaching the Minsk agreements, it is violating the fundamental principles of international law and humanity," Yatseniuk told a meeting in Kiev. "They are stopping at nothing. The rockets even hit a children's shop.”

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced that he will return early from a trip to Saudi Arabia to plan his response to the attack.

On Friday, a rebel military spokesman said that 24 rebels had been killed and 30 wounded in recent fighting.

The rebel mayor of Pervomaysk, Yehven Ischenko, was also reportedly found dead in a car along with two other people.

Ukrainian rebels currently occuply large swathes of land in eastern Donetsk and Luhansk. Mariupol occupies a strategic position, sitting between rebel-held areas of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which was annexed by Russia last year. Over 5,000 people have died since fighting broke out in the east in April and over a million people have been displaced.

A ceasefire was agreed in September but soon collapsed.