SHELLING in eastern Ukraine continued overnight despite the ceasefire, injuring one woman, the Donetsk city council said today.

The council for the rebel-held stronghold said that a school and several residential buildings had been hit by shelling, endangering the already shaky ceasefire between the rebels and Kiev’s forces.

And Ukraine ministry of defence director of medicine Vitaly Andronaty said that four servicemen had died and 29 been injured since the ceasefire began.

Both sides have blamed each other for repeated ceasefire violations in the conflict that has killed at least 3,000 people, according to the UN.

Meanwhile, a preliminary report into the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 said the Boeing 777 was probably struck by multiple “high-energy objects,” causing it to break up over eastern Ukraine.

The report by the Dutch Safety Board stopped short of attributing blame for the attack, which shot the plane out of the sky on July 17 over rebel-held territory, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board.

“The damage observed in the forward section of the aircraft appears to indicate the aircraft was penetrated by a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft,” the report said.

“It is likely that this damage resulted in a loss of structural integrity, leading to an in-flight break up.”

“The initial results of the investigation point toward an external cause of the crash,” said board chairman Tjibbe Joustra.

“More research will be necessary to determine the cause with greater precision.

“The board believes additional evidence will become available for investigation in the period ahead.”

Rebel fighters have denied shooting down the plane and maintained that stance yesterday, with Donetsk senior rebel commander Alexander Zakharchenko telling Russia’s Kommersant newspaper “we simply don’t have the technology that would have allowed us to shoot down the Malaysian plane.”

Kiev government forces also insist they did not shoot down the aircraft.

Investigators have so far studied photos of the crash site, radar data and information gleaned from the downed jet’s “black boxes.”

They all indicated that there was no technical fault that may have caused the plane to disintegrate.