Pro-Russia rebels cement hold on disputed Ukraine airport

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - Pro-Russian rebels cemented their hold Friday on a long-disputed airport ceded by Ukrainian troops during an upsurge in clashes that killed nearly 50 people and punctured Europe's latest push for peace in the nine-month war.

The deadliest day of fighting since the signing of an increasingly irrelevant September truce also saw Moscow and Kiev on Thursday trade bitter blame for a trolleybus shelling in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk that killed 13 mostly elderly passengers.

Moscow called the incident a "crime against humanity" orchestrated by a pro-Western government whose rise to power 11 months ago infuriated the Kremlin and prompted separatists to launch a revolt across the Russian-speaking industrial east.

Kiev for its part blamed the bus attack on "Russian terrorists" while monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe who raced to the site said all they could say for certain was that "the weapon used was most likely either a mortar or an artillery piece."

Stunned residents in the eastern city gathered around the shredded remains of the bus and inspected with horror several bloodied bodies that remained sprawled in their seats hours after the early morning attack.

Kiev suffered its biggest psychological blow on the bloody day when a small unit of Ukrainian paratroopers was forced to abandon its 242-day defence of Donetsk's once-gleaming but now ruined international airport.

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Pro-Russian rebels inspect a damaged trolleybus in Donetsk on January 22, 2015 (AFP )

A clam settled early on Friday over the shattered residential districts near the site after six days of some of the most intense rocket and mortar fire exchanges of the entire conflict.

The hub -- long stripped of its strategic importance by heavy shelling -- had become the symbolic prize of the conflict and had seen some of the heaviest fighting.

Rebels captured about 20 soldiers in the last hours of battle and paraded them in front of jeering locals who pelted the handcuffed men with snowballs and glass.

"They have to be punished, like Saddam Hussein. They are killers. They killed our children," a pensioner who identified herself only as Zina told AFP.

Kiev and rebel authorities said attacks across the separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk on Thursday killed 10 soldiers and some 35 civilians in addition to those who died in the bus attack.