Local emergency workers slowly pull apart the wreckage of MH17 in the grim search for bodies

Local emergency workers slowly pull apart the wreckage of MH17 in the grim search for bodies

INTENSE fighting has broken out in the Ukrainian separatist stronghold city of Donetsk as international air crash investigators and observers arrive in the region to probe the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.

Shortly after 10am local time, suburban areas in the city were being hit by indiscriminate mortar shelling, sending residents fleeing for their lives.

A rebel fighter told AFP that Ukrainian Government troops had attacked their positions close to the Donetsk railway station.

News Corp Australia saw at least four people killed in two separate mortar attacks including an elderly woman who had been walking through a courtyard park area.

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Gunshots could be hard around the central train station area of Donetsk. Ambulances were also still racing past with sirens more than an hour after the shelling stopped.

Ukrainian Government officials refused to comment on the situation citing it as an “anti-terrorist” operation.

It is understood the main train station was bombed, locals reported seeing at least one tank and two Armoured Personnel Carriers on the main Panfilova Street in the heart of the city earlier in the morning towards the train station and the central Zapadnaya bus exchange.

“We heard the whistling then the trees of the park parted and the bombs landed,” a man said as he ran across an open field seeking shelter.

“I saw an old woman dead with no face near one bomb. This is incredible — we are just a city this should not happen here.”

Also hit in the shelling was a school known as School 51 and several apartment blocks rained glass over a wide area after being directly hit or from the shock wave of the mortars landing nearby.

At least one unexploded ordinance could be seen partly protruding in the ground.

A spokesman for the self-titled Donetsk People’s Republic, Sergei Kavtaradze, said that at least four Ukrainian tanks were trying to barrel their way into the city.

The shelling and gunfire continued for about an hour, downing power lines and cutting the main train line into the city linking it to the capital Kiev.

“Why they do this why this,” wailed one woman as she took shelter in the basement of a school. “We are just people, not soldiers. The bombs were falling one after another closer and closer.”

It is holidays at the moment but in the one basement entered by News Corp there were about 70 children from nearby flats.

It had been reported for days that Ukrainian troops were gathering on the outskirts of the city; unconfirmed two that an aircraft carrying 200 Russian military personnel had landed in the area.

Donetsk city officials were running about the suburbs ordering people to take shelter.

Residents were being told to stay in basement until the all clear could be given. By midday with sporadic shooting continuing they remained in the basement.

Dutch air crash investigators were at the nearby city of Torez where 200 bodies of the victims of MH17 are being stored in four refrigerated train carriages. But there are reports too that some other investigators had just arrived by train at Donetsk.

Heavy shelling from a Ukrainian multiple rocket launcher continued well into the day with a black pall of smoke over Donetsk from the burning of a number of factories including a large disused “Toch Mash” precision instruments workshop.

One rocket landed just three metres from a home causing a large crater and bringing down trees and fences.

The latest attack prompted many homes in the area to be evacuated. Families could be seen running away or taking taxis driving at break neck speeds with as many personal belonging including suitcases as they can grab.

Locals who choose to remain are being told to stay away from the windows.

Power lines were brought down, a power substation destroyed and the pandemonium led to at lest one major car collision.

The Ukrainian Security Council denied the rockets fired onto the separatist city was by them but suggested the rocket attack and the tank attack from the morning was possibly by a pro-Ukrainian “self-organised” group.

Roads to the airport and railway station and bus hub are now cut off.

There was also clashes in the nearby town of Dzerzhinsk about 60km north of Donetsk. So far there have been just four reported deaths.