Inside Bakhmut, the battered Donbas city holding off Putin's troops
Orla Guerin - BBC, Bakhmut | 5 hours ago
His body lay where he fell - alone, flat on his back, under a weak September sun.
He was killed around noon on 24 September during hours of intense shelling in the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. We came across him by chance, and learned later than his name was Andriy Yablonsky, and he was 52.
A woman in a red coat screamed in anguish nearby, as she sheltered in a doorway. This was Andriy's sister. "What should I do for my brother?" she wailed. For more than an hour he couldn't be moved because there was no let-up in the barrage.
Andriy's life was spent saving others. He worked as an ambulance driver and was killed not far from his depot - his body punctured by shrapnel.
His name has now been added to the list of Russia's victims in Bakhmut. More than 70 civilians have been killed by enemy shelling in recent months, according to the local governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
We probably heard the shell that killed Andriy.
For hours that morning the city centre echoed to the whistle and deafening shriek of incoming shells from Russian forces, and the thud of outgoing rounds from the Ukrainians. An artillery duel was playing out around us - the retorts so fast it was hard to keep track. "It's like badminton," a Ukrainian colleague said.
A dozen civilians huddled by a wall, ducking and flinching, as one explosion followed another. Their prize possessions were stuffed into travel bags at their feet. They were waiting for a one-man evacuation team to get them out of the city. . .
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63035423
