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ByBalintSzlankoand Peter Leonard The Associated Press ARTEMIVSK,UKRAINE Rus- sian-backed separatists mounted a vicious assault Friday in eastern Ukraine ahead of a weekend cease- fire deadline, pummeling a strategic railway hub with wave upon wave of shelling in a last-minute grab for territory. At least 26 peo- ple were killed across the region. The fiercest confronta- tions focused on the gov- ernment-held town of De- baltseve, a key transport center that has been on the receiving end of dozens of artillery and rocket salvos in the 24-hour period after the peace deal was sealed Thursday by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France. Associated Press report- ers observed intense shell- ing Friday along the high- way north of Debaltseve, which remains the town's only land link with the rest of government-controlled territory. The deadline for the war- ring sides to halt hostili- ties is Sunday at one min- ute after midnight. Inter- fax-Ukraine news agency quoted Petro Mekhed, Ukraine's deputy defense minister, as saying that separatist forces had been tasked with hoisting their flags over Debaltseve, as well as the key port city of Mariupol, before the cease- fire takes hold. Military spokesman An- driy Lysenko said 11 sol- diers have been killed and 40 wounded across eastern Ukraine since the agree- ment was reached in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. At least eight civilians also have died in government- controlled territory, re- gional authorities loyal to Kiev said, while the rebels said seven civilians were killed in artillery attacks on the separatist-held cities of Luhansk and Horlivka. Shells landed Friday as far as Artemivsk, a govern- ment-held town 25 miles behind the front line. Asso- ciated Press reporters saw the body of a child killed af- ter rocket fire hit a kinder- garten there, and regional officials said the child and one other civilian died in the attack. In recent days, separat- ist fighters have nearly com- pletely encircled Ukrainian forces in Debaltseve, where all but a few thousand civil- ians have fled the fighting. Ukraine says Debalt- seve should remain in gov- ernment control under the terms of a September peace deal. A copy of that agree- ment leaked to Ukrainian media shows the town ly- ing on the government's side of the line of division agreed by both the rebels and Ukrainian officials. But even as Thursday's peace deal was announced, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian Pres- ident Petro Poroshenko ap- peared to disagree over the town's future. Putin said the rebels consider the Ukrainian forces there sur- rounded and expect them to surrender, while Ukraine insisted its troops have not been blocked. On Friday, Ukrainian access to the sole high- way linking Debaltseve to government-held territory looked to have been com- promised with the appar- ent capture of Lohvynove, a village just to the north. AP reporters on Friday saw the smoldering remains of two Ukrainian army trucks on a road nearby. The Donbass Battalion, a unit with Ukraine's Na- tional Guard that is en- gaged in battles around Lohvynove, said in a state- ment that captured com- batants had confirmed that Russian troops were ac- tively involved in the bat- tles. Moscow vehemently de- nies that it provides man- power and weapons to the rebel forces, but the sheer quantity of powerful weap- ons at the separatists' dis- posal belies that assertion. UKRAINE Cease-firedeadlineprovokes bitter last-gasp fighting MAXIMILIANCLARKE—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Russian-backed separatists wait for their transport, preparing to leave toward the frontline, in the village of Vergulivka, just outside Debaltseve, eastern Ukraine, on Friday. By Lauran Neergaard The Associated Press WASHINGTON At age 3, An- gelica Lopez is helping to break a sound barrier for deaf children. Born without working auditory nerves, she can de- tect sounds for the first time — and start to mimic them — after undergoing brain surgery to implant a device that bypasses missing wir- ing in her inner ears. Angelica is one of a small number of U.S. chil- dren who are testing what's called an auditory brain- stem implant, or ABI. The device goes beyond co- chlear implants that have brought hearing to many deaf children but that don't work for tots who lack their hearing nerve. When the ABI is first turned on, "she isn't going to be hearing like a 3-year- old. She'll be hearing like a newborn," audiologist Lau- rie Eisenberg of the Uni- versity of Southern Califor- nia tells parents. She out- lined the research Friday at a meeting of the Ameri- can Association for the Ad- vancement of Science. The children don't mag- ically understand and use those sounds. "It's going to take a lot of work," Eisen- berg cautioned. Angelica cried when her ABI first was switched on, scared by the sounds. But five months later, her mother says the youngster uses sign language to iden- tify some sounds — that was a cough, that's a dog bark- ing. And she's beginning to babble like hearing babies do, as therapists work to teach her oral speech. "It's just so awesome to hear her little voice," said Julie Lopez of Big Spring, Texas, who enrolled her daughter in the study at USC, where researchers say she's progressing well. Many children born deaf benefit from cochlear implants, electrodes that send impulses to the audi- tory nerve, where they're re- layed to the brain and rec- ognized as sound. But the small fraction born without a working hearing nerve can't make that brain con- nection. The ABI attempts to fill that gap by delivering electrical stimulation di- rectly to the neurons on the brainstem the nerve nor- mally would have targeted. Here's how it works: The person wears a microphone on the ear to detect sound, and a processer changes it to electrical signals. Those are beamed to a stimulator under the skin, which sends the signals snaking through a wire to electrodes surgi- cally placed on the brain- stem. The Food and Drug Ad- ministration approved the device in 2000 specif- ically for adults and teen- agers whose hearing nerves had been destroyed by sur- gery for a rare type of tu- mor. It doesn't restore nor- mal hearing, but can help to varying degrees. Then about a decade ago, an Italian surgeon started trying the ABI in deaf chil- dren, whose younger brains are more flexible and might better adapt to this ar- tificial way of delivering sound. Now, spurred by some successes abroad, the first U.S. studies in young chil- dren are underway at a handful of hospitals. Hear- ing specialists are watching the work closely. There are children "who are not being helped in any other way," said Dr. Gordon Hughes of the Na- tional Institutes of Health, which is funding Eisen- berg's study. And cochlear implants proved "there's a critical time window when the brain is very receptive to auditory stimulation and can develop speech commu- nication in ways that are surprisingly good, if the stimulation is started early enough." The studies are small, each enrolling 10 to 20 children. Ages vary; the Los Angeles study will im- plant starting at age 2, while some others try ear- lier. Children then receive intensive therapy, to learn to hear. BRAIN IMPLANT Device tested to help deaf children detect sounds DAMIAN DOVARGANES — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Angelica Lopez, 3, smiles during a therapy session at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Angelica was born deaf and received an auditory brainstem implant to allow her to hear some sounds in a research study at USC. ADEL HANA — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Mohammed Abu Nijem, 37, stands on the rubble of his family building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Jebaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. By Karin Laub, Fares Akram and Mohammed Daraghmeh The Associated Press RAFAH, GAZA STRIP The youngest to die was a 4-day-old girl, the oldest a 92-year-old man. They were among at least 844 Palestinians killed as a result of air- strikes on homes during Israel's summer war with the Islamic militant group, Hamas. Under the rules of war, homes are considered pro- tected civilian sites un- less used for military pur- poses. Israel says it at- tacked only legitimate targets, alleging militants used the houses to hide weapons, fighters and command centers. Pales- tinians say Israel's war- planes often struck with- out regard for civilians. The Associated Press examined 247 airstrikes on homes, interviewing witnesses, visiting attack sites and compiling a de- tailed casualty count. The review found that 508 of the dead — just over 60 percent — were children, women and older men, all presumed to be civil- ians. Hamas says it did not use women as fight- ers in the war, and an Is- rael-based research group tracking militants among the dead said it has no ev- idence women participated in combat. The AP count also showed that: • Children younger than 16 made up one-third of the total: 280 killed, in- cluding 19 babies and 108 preschoolers between the ages of 1 and 5. • In 83 strikes, three or more members of one fam- ily died. • Among those killed were 96 confirmed or sus- pected militants — or just over 11 percent of the total — though the actual num- ber could be higher since armed groups have not re- leased detailed casualty lists. • The remainder of the 240 dead were males be- tween the ages of 16 and 59 whose names did not appear in connection with militant groups on searches of websites or on street posters honoring fighters. The review was the most painstaking attempt to date to determine who was killed in strikes on homes in the Gaza war even as Is- rael's army and Gaza mil- itants have refused to re- lease information about targets and casualties. High civilian death toll in Gaza house strikes ISRAEL-PALESTINE By Michael Biesecker and Jonathan Drew The Associated Press RALEIGH, N.C. The sus- pect in the deaths of three Muslim college students in North Carolina had at least a dozen firearms and a large ammunition stash in his home, according to search warrants released on Friday as world leaders decried the shootings. Warrants filed in Dur- ham County Superior Court included an inventory of the weapons seized by po- lice from the Chapel Hill condominium of Craig Ste- phen Hicks, the 46-year-old charged with three counts of first-degree murder. The warrants list three handguns recovered from the Hicks home he shared with his wife, in addition to a pistol the suspect had with him when he turned himself in to sheriff's depu- ties. The warrants also list two shotguns and seven ri- fles, including a military- style AR-15 carbine. Po- lice also recovered numer- ous loaded magazines and cases of ammunition. Eight spent shell-casings were found in the neigh- boring apartment of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21. Also killed was the wife's sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19. Relatives say all were shot in the head. Author- ities haven't disclosed ex- actly how the victims died. "No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they wor- ship," President Barack Obama said in Washington. 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