Status: 03/31/2022 11:44 am
People in Ukraine continue to flee the contested areas. In the town of Irpin, bodies are said to lie in the streets, and there are reports of abuse and humiliation.
After weeks of fighting in Irpin, a few dozen residents of the town west of Kyiv have finally reached a safe haven. Reuters news agency released footage of a refugee convoy arriving in a town outside the combat zone.
She buried four people, says Yulia Kalmutska. Her father, as well as two young men from the neighborhood who couldn’t flee quickly enough from the Russian machine gun salvos, and an old woman who was cooking when she was shot at.
A woman carries a child in her arms during the evacuation from Irpin.
Image: REUTERS
“We ran for our lives”
“We hid in the basement,” says Kalmutska. “We were 37 people. Russian machine guns rattled outside, then the building caught fire. We ran for our lives, but all of us made it.”
“A tank fired six meters away from us,” a man interjected. “I’m still deaf from the bang.”
Corpses are collected from the streets
Footage from various news outlets showed rescue workers collecting bodies from the streets of Irpin, while explosions and grenade launchers could still be heard in the background.
At least 200 people have died in Irpin since the start of the war, the mayor of the small town, Oleksandr Markhushyn, said at a press conference in the Ukrainian capital. There are definitely still many dead under the rubble of the houses.
Reports of abuse of women
According to Markushyn, booby traps have been laid in the parks and along the Russian trenches. The Ukrainian soldiers are in the process of checking everything and removing the explosive devices.
“I talked to residents who were hiding in the basements,” says Markhushyn. “They reported to me that the Russians forced them to undress, that they were searched and there were also reports of abuse of women. The women and men were separated. They were supposed to serve as exchange masses, it was said, for prisoners Soldiers. Terrible stories.”
conflicting parties as a source
In the current situation, information on the course of the war, shelling and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict parties cannot be directly checked by an independent body.
roadside mines
Terrible stories are also told by refugees from other places in the contested areas who came to Lviv to travel on to Poland.
Larysa Holovata fled the embattled towns in the south of the country to the city of Zaporizhia in a convoy of cars: “The drive was terrible. There were bodies lying around everywhere that nobody was clearing away. And there were mines along the roadside, and the fields next to the roads were also mined , there was even one in the middle of the road. Our driver said how am I supposed to drive there when there are mines everywhere?”
Shaded in white: advance of the Russian army. Shaded in green: Russian-backed separatist areas. Crimea: annexed by Russia.
Image: ISW/03/30/2022
More than 100,000 people in Mariupol
Inna Kovets, a young mother, fled Donetsk with her children when fighting in Donbass intensified. “My baby was born on February 17, I was discharged from the hospital on February 21, and three days later the war started,” says the young mother. “First we hid in the basement, but then I realized that it just doesn’t work with the baby and that we have to flee. We had just bought and furnished an apartment. And now it’s all gone.”
A humanitarian corridor is also to be set up for the heavily contested city of Mariupol, south of the Donbass, so that more civilians can leave the city. More than 100,000 people are said to be still in the constantly bombed city, although there is said to be little food left there.