Two Ukrainian soldiers and one civilian were killed in the country’s rebel-held east as clashes rattled an official truce aimed at ending nearly a year of fighting, Kiev and rebels said Saturday.

Two Ukrainian soldiers and one civilian were killed in the country's rebel-held east as clashes rattled an official truce aimed at ending nearly a year of fighting, Kiev and rebels said Saturday.

"Over the last 24 hour we have lost two soldiers and seven were injured," Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters.

Rebel military representative Eduard Basurin also announced that a civilian was killed and one injured after tripping a bomb in Vuglegirsk, north-east of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, on Thursday.

Basurin accused Kiev forces of injuring three civilians -- a man, woman and a child -- when they fired on Donetsk's Petrovsky district with a 120-mm mortar late Friday.

According to both sides, skirmishes continued to flare around Shyrokyne, a village close to the strategic port Mariupol, Kiev's largest remaining stronghold in the rebel-held east.