Burned cars on a destroyed parking site in a residential area in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Saturday.

DONETSK: As many as 20 people were killed Saturday when rockets hit a market in a vital Ukrainian port linking rebel territory with Russian-occupied Crimea after the pro-Moscow insurgents vowed to grab more land.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said 76 people were also wounded in the city of Mariupol by Grad rockets that smashed into a packed residential district, which faces roads that have been attacked by separatist militias in recent days.

The local mayor’s office added that several buildings went up in flames and cars were torched in the assaults.

“Right now there are problems with the cellphone network so it is impossible to call relatives who live in that part of town,” Mariupol resident Eduard told AFP by telephone.

“Obviously, everyone in the city is very scared. The rebels have already seized the airport. And now they are starting to destroy Mariupol itself.”

Photographs of the attack published on local news sites showed a towering cloud of grey smoke billowing over homes and a row of high-rise apartment buildings.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk immediately convened an emergency security meeting designed to prepare a response to the attack on Mariupol.

The southeastern Sea of Azov city of nearly 500,000 sits on a highway connecting guerrilla-held regions to the east and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea that Russia annexed from Ukraine last March in a move condemned by the international community.

A rebel assault on the port in August saw Kiev repel the attack at a heavy cost that prompted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to agree to a Sept. 5 cease-fire.

That truce was followed by still more clashes that killed at least 1,500 people and was ultimately rejected by the rebels on Friday.

The separatist leader of Donetsk said on Friday he was ripping up the September agreement and launching an all-out offensive aimed at seizing eastern lands still allied with the pro-Western authorities in Kiev.

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