The youngsters came across the object. They took pictures on their phones. They threw it in the air. It landed and blew up. And just like that, five children were injured, some severely, and two were dead.

It is a horror story of terrible familiarity in war -- curiosity leading to child fatalities from unexploded munitions -- and now it has come to eastern Ukraine. 

Six U.N. peacekeepers from Ukraine were arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo Wednesday for illegally being in possession of Congolese military uniforms.

The six were detained at Goma airport in the country's restive east along with the supplier of the uniforms, a Congolese man, according to Lieutenant Colonel Olivier Hamuli, a spokesman for the Congolese army (FARDC).

Canada's Defense Minister Rob Nicholson announced Wednesday the sending of winter coats, boots and gloves to dress 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers fighting pro-Moscow separatists in east Ukraine.

The shipment is to be flown to Kiev on Thursday, he told a press conference.

NATO's top military commander jetted into Ukraine for high-level talks on Wednesday as fighting rumbled on between government forces and Kremlin-backed rebels in the east.  

U.S. General Philip Breedlove was set to meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as Kiev stirred further Russian ire by stating it hoped to join the Western security alliance.   

NATO's top military commander said Wednesday he was "very concerned" that Russia's military build-up in the annexed Crimean region could be used as a launchpad for attacks across the whole Black Sea region.

U.S. General Philip Breedlove's comments come amid fears in Kiev that Russian-backed rebels will try to grab more land in eastern Ukraine to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March.

French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday delayed the controversial delivery of a high-tech warship to Russia "until further notice" over the Ukraine crisis.

"The President of the Republic considers that the current situation in eastern Ukraine still does not allow for the delivery of the first" warship, Hollande's office said in a statement.

Three civilians were killed by shelling in the rebel-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine over the past 24 hours, separatist officials said on Tuesday.

One shell hit a minibus early on Tuesday, killing two passengers including a man of around 25 and a woman in her forties, and injuring eight others, a hospital source told AFP. 

There was a blinding flash, then complete darkness and thick clouds of dust. A missile had just hit Ivan Balabanov's house in rebel-held east Ukraine. 

Stunned, Ivan groped around in the pitch black to find his flashlight.

Russia is losing around $40 billion (32 billion euros) per year due to Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, its finance minister said Monday although President Vladimir Putin dismissed the economic damage as "not fatal".

"We are losing around $40 billion per year due to geopolitical sanctions," Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in a speech at an economic forum in Moscow, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency.

Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed in clashes between government forces and Kremlin-backed rebels over the past 24 hours in the war-torn east, the Ukrainian military said Monday.

Government positions at strategic flashpoints around the conflict zone came under attack 56 times, the military said.