KIEV: Five Ukrainian soldiers and two rebel fighters have been killed in fresh clashes between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, the military said on Sunday.

“Unfortunately, over the past 24 hours, five Ukrainian soldiers have died and four more have been wounded,” military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told reporters.

It was the second biggest death toll in a single day this year for the army after the military reported on Tuesday that seven government troops had died in the east of the country.

The villages of Avdiivka and Opytne located close to the rebels’ de-facto capital of Donetsk remain the epicentre of the fighting, said Motuzyanyk.

In the rebel-held east two insurgents had also been killed over the past 24 hours, said rebel spokesman Eduard Basurin.

He confirmed the situation had become worse near the village of Avdiivka.

“Some 30 people from the Ukrainian side with mortar guns and armoured personnel carrriers have tried to break through but we repelled the attack,” he said.

The latest deaths came after Kiev said Saturday that another Ukrainian soldier had died in clashes with rebels near the government-controlled city of Mariupol.

“The situation has worsened sharply,” another military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said Saturday.

On Monday, the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine called for the 2015 peace accords signed in the Belarussian capital Minsk to be implemented “as quickly as possible”, according to the French presidency.

The accords call for a ceasefire along with a range of political, economic and social measures to end the conflict which erupted in April 2014 and has now claimed more than 9,300 lives.

But persistent violence is preventing the warring sides from reaching a reconciliation deal despite a series of truce agreements.

The latest spike in violence came after Kiev scored a major diplomatic victory on Wednesday by securing the return of Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko as part of a prisoner swap with the Kremlin.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko received Savchenko late on Saturday.The two discussed the exacerbation of violence in the east, with Poroshenko asking the 35-year-old Iraq war veteran “to visit a number of European countries and hold meetings with European leaders”.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2016