MINSK: Ukraine and pro-Russia rebels signed a ceasefire on Friday in their five-month conflict.

“A preliminary protocol to the ceasefire agreement has been signed in Minsk. This protocol should enter into force on Friday,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on his official Twitter account.

The deal took effect at 1500 GMT. Rebels confirmed this.

It was not immediately clear whether the truce would be enough to stave off a threatened new round of Western sanctions against Russia over claims — which Moscow denied — that it was stirring up war in the former Soviet state.

In the tense hours leading up to the deal, fighting raged on the edge of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, the latest flashpoint in a conflict that has claimed around 2,600 lives since mid-April and driven more than half a million people from their homes.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2014