Ukrainian war planes 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.
Panicked Ukrainians flooded highways and packed trains leading out of the main remaining rebel stronghold of Donetsk yesterday after Ukraine's new Western-backed leader immediately vowed to hunt down the guilty militias.
"The rebels will pay for the life of every one of our servicemen with tens and hundred of their own," President Petro Poroshenko told an emergency security meeting.
In exchanges marking a sharp escalation in the three-month conflict, jets struck at the "epicentre" of the battle against rebels near the border with Russia, a military spokesman said.
The planes targeted positions from where separatists, using high-powered Grad missiles, bombarded an army motorised brigade on Friday, killing 23 servicemen.
Warplanes also struck at targets near Donetsk, the east's main town where rebels have dug in, destroying a powerful 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 and damaged two armoured transporters," Lysenko told journalists.
In an earlier air attack on a base near Perevalsk, north of Donetsk, two tanks, 10 armoured vehicles and "about 500" rebel fighters were destroyed, he said.
Rebel representatives, quoted by Russian news agencies, denied they suffered big losses and said the Ukrainians were using outdated intelligence on where separatist forces were deployed.
The increasing violence will bring a new sense of urgency to diplomatic attempts to end the worst crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
More than 200 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed since the violence began in February, and hundreds of civilians and rebels have also died.