DHAKA: At least 10 people died Saturday when heavy rockets fell on residential districts of Ukraine’s strategic government-held port of Mariupol in the wake of Russian-backed rebels’ rejection of peace talks.

The police chief of the war-torn region of Donetsk said the long-range Grad rockets hit a market in an eastern district facing roads that have come under attack from separatist militias in recent days.

The southeastern Sea of Azov city of nearly 500,000 sits on a highway connecting guerrilla-held regions to the east and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea that Russia annexed from Ukraine in March.

A massive rebel assault on the port in August led to intense fighting that saw Kiev repel the attack at a heavy cost that soon prompted Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to agree to a September 5 truce, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1535 HRS, JAN 24, 2015