KIEV, Jan. 10 - Two Ukrainian soldiers and two rebels have been killed in eastern Ukraine, marking the first deaths this year in the war-torn region, Kiev and breakaway officials said Sunday in separate tolls, AFP reported.

"Over the last day, two Ukrainian soldiers have been killed,“ military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told reporters, despite a wobbly truce between the pro-Russian rebels and government forces still largely holding.

A Ukrainian police officer fighting in the Mirotvorets volunteer battalion was killed in shelling near the village of Zaitseve, some 35 miles northeast of the rebels' de facto capital Donetsk.

He died as he tried to stop a car carrying civilians and prevent it from coming under fire. A woman in the car was wounded.