The total number of shelling in the hostilities zone in Donbas in first three days of this week exceeded its number in the entire previous week, Principal Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine Alexander Hug has said.

Available information shows that in first three days of this week the OSCE SMM recorded almost the same number of explosions caused by use of weapons banned by the Minsk agreements as in the entire previous week, Hug said at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.

He said that the situation in Donbas remains tense and volatile and the last week showed that the trend recorded throughout the past two weeks persisted. An increase in the number of use of weapons banned by the Minsk agreements, in particular, mortars, tanks and artillery weapons, including multiple-launch rocket systems, is concerning, Hug said.

The SMM recorded an increase in the number of explosions caused by artillery fire by 250% and a twelve-fold increase in the number of explosions caused by mortar fire in the past week, in comparison to the previous week, he said. A total of 27 explosions caused by use of multiple-rocket launch systems were also recorded in the past week, while none of them were recorded the week before, he said.