MARINKA (Ukraine) Three people were killed on Wednesday when a passenger minibus hit a mine in separatist eastern Ukraine during a relative calm in fighting in the 21-month war.

A reporter at the scene saw pools of blood and personal belongings of the victims scattered near a checkpoint at Marinka — a flashpoint village of about 10,000 people that witnessed heavy battles between pro-Russian rebels and government troops in June.

“There are lots of anti-tank mines in this field and it seems that it hit one of them,” a 55-year-old witness who identified himself only as Vladimir said.

“It was a huge blast”. Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Zadubinniy said that two civilians died at the scene and a third in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Local official had initially said that the body of a fourth victim was later found on the side of the road.

But the pro-Kiev prosecutor’s office in the region said that “information about the fourth victim proved to be wrong”. The incident occur­r­ed about 20 kilometres southwest of the de-facto rebel capital Donetsk as the bus and its five passengers were leaving a separatist-run part of the province towards a government-administered area.

Officials said the driver had ignored mine warning signs posted along the road and drove onto a field a few hundred metres (yards) from the Ukrainian checkpoint.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2016