Rebel region bids farewell to slain Tolstykh
Tolstykh's body was laid out in the city's opera theatre with the battalion's flag covering his closed coffin.
Mikhail Tolstyk was a leading commander of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic
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Kiev and the insurgents have traded blame for the death of Mikhail Tolstykh with investigators saying a portable rocket launcher was fired at his office in a suburb of Donetsk on Wednesday morning.
The 36-year-old whose nom de guerre was "Givi" was head of the powerful "Somali" battalion and a leading commander of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic in the east of Ukraine.
AFP reporters saw about 2,000 people -- most of them pensioners and rebel fighters -- line up with flowers and orange-and-black ribbons expressing their support for Russia to get inside the theatre and say their final goodbyes.
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Another well-known Donetsk military chief called Arseny Pavlov was killed in a bomb attack in October last year.
Several rebel commanders considered to be a threat to the separatist authorities -- or those who have become too powerful -- have been killed in car bombings and ambushes far from the scene of the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Tolstykh took part in major battles with Ukrainian government forces in a conflict that has been going on for 33 months despite Western efforts to forge a truce.
He was born in eastern Ukraine and served in the army as a tank commander before working in various manual jobs and then joining the rebel cause when the war broke out in April 2014.
He and Pavlov -- better known as "Motorola" -- had been the most recognised faces among the rebels during the worst of the fighting.
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They both starred in viral video clips from the combat zone and were often interviewed by Russian state channels.
More than 10,000 people have been killed since Ukraine's mostly Russian-speaking eastern industrial regions revolted against Kiev's pro-Western government after the ouster of the former Soviet republic's Kremlin-backed president.
Kiev and the West have accused Russia of supporting the rebels and deploying troops across the border -- claims that Moscow denies.
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