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As fighting continues in east Ukraine, U.S. releases images said to implicate …

KYIV, Ukraine — Rebels and government troops fired on each other’s positions in a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, sending residents into bomb shelters, as Washington released satellite images that it said proved Russia is shooting across the border into Ukraine to support separatists.

At least 13 civilNEWS.GNOM.ES were reported killed in the fighting around Horlivka, an industrial city of almost 300,000 people about 30 miles from the rebel bastion of Donetsk. According to a resident reached by telephone, parts of the city are without water or electricity, grocery stores are empty, and both rebels and residents are fleeing. The Ukrainian military denied targeting civilNEWS.GNOM.ES and said the pro-Russian rebels were to blame for the damage and casualties. The military accused the rebels of painting tanks with Ukrainian insignia and firing into residential neighborhoods.

The battle in Horlivka is part of a major push by the military to isolate and eventually oust the rebel fighters from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. If it succeeds, it would be a hugely symbolic and strategic victory.

Konashenkov denied U.S. statements last week that Russia, after first decreasing the number of troops it has deployed along the Ukraine border, has now increased them to at least 15,000. Regular international inspections under the Open Skies Treaty, he said, “have not registered any violations or undeclared military activity on the part of Russia in the areas adjacent to the Ukrainian border.”

Under the international treaty, member governments regularly conduct overflights, after providing advance notice, of neighboring countries. Although such flights were common in the early days of the Ukraine conflict, it is unclear whether any have been conducted recently. The U.S. photographs, disseminated by the State Department as “evidence of Russia firing into Ukraine,” were declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and presumably taken by U.S. surveillance assets flying overhead.

Konashenkov said similar inspections of “Ukrainian armed forces’ active combat actions in the areas adjacent to the Russian border” would “register high concentration of Ukrainian troops, armaments and military equipment that regularly shell Russian settlements and have already killed and injured our citizens there.”

The high-altitude satellite images released Sunday “provide evidence that Russian forces have fired across the border at Ukrainian military forces, and that Russia-backed separatists have used heavy artillery, provided by Russia, in attacks on Ukrainian forces from inside Ukraine,” according to labels on the pictures.

The most recent photograph, taken Saturday, shows what is described as “blast marks” from rocket-launcher fire on the Russian side of the border and “impact craters” inside Ukraine.

A photograph labeled as taken Wednesday shows a row of vehicles described as “self-propelled artillery only found in Russian military units, on the Russian side of the border, oriented in the direction of a Ukrainian military unit within Ukraine.” On the other side of the border, “the pattern of crater impacts near the Ukrainian military unit indicates strikes from artillery fired from self-propelled or towed artillery, vice multiple rocket launchers,” it said.

The Obama administration has said that direct Russian participation in Ukraine, along with its failure to use its influence on the separatists to allow international inspectors access to the site of the July 17 Malaysian airliner crash inside separatist territory, should lead to increased sanctions against Russia.

A team of forensic experts and investigators arrived in Donetsk on Sunday planning to head for the crash site. But the visit was called off for safety reasons.

Sunday marked the third day of the Ukrainian army’s assault on rebels in Horlivka. Some residents said shelling began shortly after dawn and continued intermittently throughout the day.

Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said troops are not carrying out air or artillery strikes against civilNEWS.GNOM.ES. He blamed the attacks on rebels, who he said are trying to frighten residents and discredit the army by posing as government troops.

A video taken in Horlivka on Sunday showed large plumes of gray smoke rising from several locations in the city.

A resident named Viktor, a 32-year-old engineer who asked that his last name not be published because of the precarious situation, said he has watched from his sixth-floor balcony as the army and rebels fired on each other. He said he saw rockets launched from a rebel position and return fire come a few minutes later, but he could not say with certainty which side was in position there.

The exchange set the local energy company’s office on fire, struck a supermarket on the ground floor of an apartment building and destroyed a building housing the kitchen of the local hospital, he said.

The resident described how eerie it is in Horlivka. There is virtually no traffic except for a few speeding cars that appear to be driven by rebels, many of whom he said have left. Residents who own houses are spending nights in their basements, he said, while residents of apartment buildings have retreated to abandoned, Soviet-era bomb shelters that smell of sewage.

“A lot of people have left,” he said. “But my mother is here, and I can’t leave her.”

DeYoung reported from Washington. Karoun Demirjian in St. Petersburg and Alex Ryabchyn in Kyiv contributed to this report.