KIEV, Feb. 7 - The front line in eastern Ukraine is on the brink of more outbreaks of fighting despite the lull of the last few days, ITV News cited a senior international monitor as saying.

Alexander Hug, of the OSCE special monitoring mission to Ukraine, spoke in the town of Avdiivka, which was subjected to heavy shelling last week as Ukrainian government forces clashed with Russian-backed separatists.

The sound of artillery fire could still be heard across Avdiivka Tuesday, but the intensity of the fighting has diminished. Power has been restored to most of the town, averting a growing humanitarian crisis.

Hug, the OSCE’s Principal Deputy Chief Monitor, said tension remained high because both sides had moved heavy weapons into the area, in breach of the Minsk II peace agreement signed two years ago.

He said: "Ever since the tensions have increased here the sides have moved in military hardware, heavy weapons close to the contact line. These weapons are still in place and positions on both sides are far too close, this leads to a permanent state of tension.

"At the moment the sides are holding down fire but the root cause of the presence of heavy weapons and the close proximity has not been dealt with and this leads to permanent fighting and the fighting affects the civilian areas here significantly," Hug said.

A sharp escalation in fighting over the past week has killed at least 33 people, centering on Avdiyivka, a government-held town just north of rebel-controlled Donetsk. Nearly 180 homes or apartments in the town of 35,000 people were damaged in the shelling, according to Pavlo Zhebrivskiy, a government official in the Donetsk region.

More than 9,800 have died from fighting between troops and Russia-backed rebels since April 2014.

Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, and is under international sanction by the U.S. and European Union.

Russia insists its military build up on the Ukrainian border is simply a routine military exercise. U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal they believe Russia may be trying to bait the Ukrainian government into a military confrontation. If Ukraine initiated a military confrontation, it would counter the Western narrative of Russian aggression and justify another Russian military incursion into Ukraine.

The ongoing war in Ukraine is in violation of the Minsk 2 agreement, which Russia is bound by. Russia originally invaded Ukraine by dispatching troops in 2014 in un-flagged uniforms. These troops have come to be known as “little green men” and are portrayed by the Russian government as “volunteers.” (itv/ez)