SLOVIANSK, June 8 /ITAR-TASS/. At least several civilians were killed and many were wounded as Ukraine’s military subjected the center of the east Ukrainian city of Sloviansk to artillery fire, local self-defense forces said on Sunday.

“There were many people in the center of the city during these hours as a festive service had just ended in the church located in the square,” the self-defense forces said. “There are victims among civilians and many received fragmentation wounds,” the self-defense forces said, without specifying the number of those killed and wounded.

The shells exploded in the area of the central square, the city administration building and the communications center, the self-defense forces said.

Earlier on Sunday Stella Khorosheva, spokeswoman for the Sloviansk people’s mayor, said mobile communications worked poorly and there were “serious problems with drinking water.”

“The water pipe has not yet been restored and water has remained only where people have made up bottled water stocks or have their own wells,” she said.

Power supply has been cut off in most of the city. At night, the Ukrainian military are using illuminating projectiles, the spokeswoman said.

Kiev is continuing its punitive operation in east Ukraine, despite the pledge by the newly elected Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to “bring peace” to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.