The Ukrainian Security Service's (SBU) department in the Luhansk region has opened a criminal inquiry into the explosion of an OSCE Special Monitoring Mission vehicle in an area not controlled by Kyiv in the Luhansk region on the counts of a terror attack causing the death of a person.

"The Ukrainian Security Service's department in the Luhansk region has entered information related to this fact into the Unified Register of Preliminary Inquiries under Ukrainian Criminal Code Article 2458 Part 3, (a terror attack causing the death of a person). A team from the regional prosecution service is overseeing the proceeding. The regional prosecutor is controlling the inquiry into the terror attack," the Luhansk regional prosecution service said in a report on Monday.

Those found guilty would face a prison term of 10 to 15 years or a lifetime sentence, with or without confiscation of assets.

An OSCE SMM vehicle was blown up by a mine in the vicinity of Pryshyb in the Luhansk region in the morning of April 23. According to a report of the Ukrainian mission to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination referring to the officers on duty, a ceasefire was being observed in that period both by Kyiv and the militants in the Luhansk region.

A number of media outlets said earlier that the car explosion killed a U.S. citizen and inflicted injuries on German citizens.

Pryshyb is a village in the Slovianoserbsk district of Ukraine's Luhansk region, which has been under the control of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) since 2014. The village is situated on the western bank of the Seversky Donets River. The line of contact between the warring sides lies north of the village and along the riverbed.