KYIV. Aug 1 (Interfax) - Fourteen Ukrainian servicemen are believed to have been killed in a shootout after getting trapped in an ambush set up by militiamen near the city of Shakhtarsk, Donetsk region, military operation press officer Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky told Interfax on Friday.
"Reports claiming that 21 people have been killed are not true. The numbers are currently being verified. The preliminary information available indicates that 14 people were killed. Ten of them have been identified. As far as the other four are concerned, it remains unclear whether they are separatists or our soldiers," Dmytrashkivsky said.
Negotiations are currently under way concerning the transfer of the dead bodies and injured soldiers, he said.
The unit was heading to another area when it was trapped in an ambush and came under fire, eh said.
Dmytrashkivsky claims that "the terrorists have sustained heavy losses in this district as well."
The press center of the army operation in eastern Ukraine reported earlier that "the superior forces of the adversary fired their weapons on our troops from an ambush, taking advantage of the terrain conditions in the city of Shakhtarsk. The units, which were being redeployed at the moment, sustained losses."
Hromadske TV reported earlier that 21 paratroopers had been killed in that incident.
Furthermore, Interfax has been informed that 48 injured soldiers from eastern Ukraine, among them the paratroopers injured in the ambush near Shakhtarsk, have been admitted to three hospitals in the city of Dnipropetrovsk over the past 24 hours.
Of them, 44 people were admitted to the city's military hospital, two to the Mechnikov regional hospital, and the remaining two to the city's Hospital No. 16.
"Servicemen injured in the area of the anti-terrorist operation are being transported to our hospital. The soldiers who were admitted yesterday have already undergone surgery, but remain in critical state. The guys sustained wounds to the head," Mechnikov hospital head doctor Serhiy Ryzhenko told Interfax.
The dead bodies of several soldiers killed as a result of fighting in Ukraine's eastern regions were delivered to Dnipropetrovsk on Thursday.