Death Toll in Ukraine Passenger Bus Attack Reaches 12

By Reuters

Jan. 14, 2015

Investigators work at the site were a passenger bus was damaged by shelling, at a checkpoint of the Ukrainian forces in the village of Bugas, near the town of Volnovakha in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine on Jan. 13, 2015. Nikolai Ryabchenko / Reuters

The death toll in an attack on a passenger bus in eastern Ukraine is now 12, police said Wednesday.

The latest violence flared on Tuesday after Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany scrapped plans for a summit in Kazakhstan this week because of the failure to implement a four-month-old ceasefire agreement.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko condemned the bus attack as an act that "chilled the heart" and blamed it on the forces of the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.

"These deaths are on the conscience of the DNR and LNR gangs and on those who stand behind them," he said, promising to sign a decree on Wednesday on more troops for the front.

But his comments aroused indignation on Wednesday among some Ukrainians seeking tougher action against the separatists.

"The terrorists fire on a bus with pensioners, kill children, shoot volunteers and torture them in cellars and we say simply that we are 'ready'," wrote Oksana Zinovieva, a spokeswoman for Kiev mayor Vitaly Klitshchko, on her Facebook page. "We have been trying to convert readiness into action for too long already."

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