REUTERS • Sunday July 13, 2014 9:47 AM
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian warplanes bombarded separatists along a broad front yesterday, inflicting huge losses, Kiev said, after President Petro Poroshenko said “scores and hundreds” would be made to pay for a deadly missile attack on Ukrainian forces.
In exchanges marking an escalation in the three-month conflict, jets struck at the “epicenter” of the battle against rebels near the border with Russia, a military spokesman said.
The planes hit positions from which separatists, using high-powered Grad missiles, bombarded an army motorized brigade on Friday, killing 23 servicemen.
Warplanes also struck targets near Donetsk, the east’s main town where rebels have dug in, destroying a fighter base near Dzerzhinsk, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the “anti-terrorist operation,” said.
“According to preliminary assessment, Ukrainian pilots … killed about 500 (rebel) fighters (战斗机) and damaged two armored transporters,” Lysenko said.
In an earlier air attack on a base near Perevalsk, north of Donetsk, two tanks and 10 armored vehicles were destroyed and “about 500” rebel fighters (战斗机) were killed, he said.