More than 50 rebels killed in biggest Ukraine government assault

More than 50 pro-Russian rebels were killed in an unprecedented assault by Ukrainian government forces, which raged into a second day on Tuesday after a newly-elected president vowed to crush the revolt in the east once and for all.
   
Reuters journalists counted 20 bodies in combat fatigues in one room of a city morgue in Donetsk. Some of the bodies were missing limbs, sign that the government had brought to bear overwhelming firepower against the rebels for the first time.
   
"From our side, there are more than 50 (dead)," the prime minister of the rebels' self-styled Donetsk People's Republic, Alexander Borodai, told Reuters at the hospital.
   
The government said it suffered no losses in the assault, which began with air strikes hours after Ukrainians overwhelmingly voted to elect a 48-year-old billionaire confectionary magnate Petro Poroshenko as their new president.
   
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has declared Moscow's right to intervene to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine, demanded an immediate halt to the offensive. Moscow also said it would not consider a visit by Poroshenko for any talks.
   
Until now, Ukrainian forces have largely avoided direct assaults on the separatists, in part out of what they say is fear of precipitating an invasion by tens of thousands of Russian troops massed on the border.
   
But the government in Kiev appears to have interpreted Poroshenko's big election victory - he won more than 54 percent of the vote in a field of 21 candidates, against 13 percent for his closest challenger - as a mandate for decisive action.
   
After rebels seized the Donetsk airport on Monday, Ukrainian warplanes and...