UN HUMAN-RIGHTS commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein panned both the Ukrainian government and the anti-fascist resistance today for the civilian death toll.

Indiscriminate shelling and an escalation in the fighting in eastern Ukraine have killed at least 224 civilians in the past three weeks alone, he said, raising the overall death toll to 5,358 people since April.

Hostilities resumed last month with a vengeance after a month of relative calm, while the latest peace talks broke down on Saturday.

“Bus stops and public transport, marketplaces, schools and kindergartens, hospitals and residential areas have become battlegrounds … in clear breach of international humanitarian law,” said Mr Hussein, adding that 545 civilians were wounded in the last three weeks as well.

He blamed the high civilian death toll on “the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas in both government-controlled territory and in areas controlled by the armed groups.”

Resistance fighters in Donetsk announced today that Kiev forces’ artillery fire had killed at least eight people and wounded 22 others in the past day.

Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that five servicemen had been killed and 27 wounded in the same period.

The rebels’ main offensive is now directed at Debaltseve, a railway junction between the cities of Lugansk and Donetsk.

They liberated the nearby town of Vuhlehirsk last week but insist that they are not planning to storm Debaltseve itself because of the potential for civilian casualties.

Donetsk resistance leader Alexander Zakharchenko says that his fighters are helping to evacuate Vuhlehirsk because of the heavy fighting.