(Adds details on rescue, death toll in paragraph 4, warning for civilians to flee in last two paragraphs.)
* Rescuers race to save people trapped in apartment strike
* 'In shock, all covered in blood,' says one survivor
* Civilians warned to flee Russia-occupied region
*
By Anna Voitenko and Max Hunder
CHASIV YAR/KYIV, Ukraine, July 10 (Reuters) - At least 15 people were killed and two dozen more were feared trapped after Russian rockets hit a five-story apartment block in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, local officials said on Sunday as rescuers picked their way through rubble.
Ukraine also reported clashes with Russian troops on fronts in the east and south, while Moscow said its forces struck Ukrainian army hangars storing U.S.-produced M777 howitzers, a type of artillery, near Kostyantynivka in Donetsk region.
Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the strike on the apartment building took place on Saturday evening in the town of Chasiv Yar. The regional emergency service gave the death toll at 15 on Sunday afternoon.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, wrote on Telegram that six people had been rescued from the rubble at Chasiv Yar, and that 23 people, including a child, remained buried. "We ran to the basement, there were three hits, the first somewhere in the kitchen," said a local resident who gave her name as Ludmila, speaking as rescuers removed a body in a white sheet and cleared rubble using a crane as well as their hands.
"The second, I do not even remember, there was lightning, we ran towards the second entrance and then straight into the basement. We sat there all night until this morning."
Another survivor, who gave her name as Venera, said she had wanted to save her two kittens.
"I was thrown into the bathroom, it was all chaos, I was in shock, all covered in blood," she said, crying. "By the time I left the bathroom, the room was full up of rubble, three floors fell down. I never found the kittens under the rubble."
FIGHTING FOR TERRITORY
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in a Telegram post that the strike was "another terrorist attack," and Russia should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism as a result.
Russia, which says it is conducting a "special military operation" to demilitarize Ukraine, denies deliberately attacking civilians.
Luhansk and Donetsk provinces comprise the Donbas, Ukraine's eastern industrial region that has become Europe's biggest battlefield in generations. Russia wants to wrest control of the Donbas on behalf of the separatists that it supports.