Mortar shells exploded near Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky during his trip to the front line in the east of the country, AFP journalists noted on Saturday.
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The incident, which did not cause any injuries, took place near the village of Novoluganské, in the Donetsk region, on the front line with the Russian-backed separatists, where the minister and Ukrainian MPs were returned in the context of unprecedented tensions with Moscow.
The shells exploded as Mr Monastyrsky left trenches that separate Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists, following giving interviews to international media.
Journalists and officials left the area soon following.
The Ukrainian army reported two soldiers killed and four others injured in the shelling on Saturday. At least one of them, a 35-year-old captain and father of three, was killed near Novolouganské early in the morning.
The military and Moscow-backed separatists accuse each other of escalating the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has claimed more than 14,000 lives since 2014.
Separatists who partially control Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions say Kiev is planning an invasion once morest them. They launched an evacuation of the population and announced the general mobilization.
Ukraine rejects these accusations and pleads for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. The West accuses Moscow of looking for a pretext to invade its Ukrainian neighbor, Russia having massed more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border.
