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Mariupol. — Gunfire and heavy shelling rocked a key frontline city in eastern Ukraine overnight, raising fears yesterday that a tenuous truce between government and rebel forces had already collapsed.Numerous explosions rattled the night sky and thick smoke was visible on the horizon of Mariupol, a strategic government-held port city on the Azov Sea in the southeast of the country.

Residents spoke of their panic as the fighting erupted, with gunfire and shelling that damaged buildings and vehicles.

“Everyone is starting to flee,” one 46-year-old Mariupol resident who gave her name only as Victoria told AFP.

“I’m frightened. I want peace but I think this ceasefire is finished, this is the third night we haven’t been able to sleep.”

The renewed violence erupted just hours after a phone call between Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and his Russian counterpart

Vladimir Putin, who agreed that the ceasefire signed on Friday was “generally being observed”. — AFP