DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) – A month-long cease-fire in Donetsk looks like this: nine civilians killed on Wednesday, a Red Cross staffer killed Thursday, scores killed and wounded since the fighting was supposed to stop.
Day after day, artillery shells and rockets fly overhead. Many explode in densely populated residential areas as the rebels have fought to dislodge Ukrainian government forces from the Donetsk airport just north of the city.
“All windows in our house were shaking, I was sitting on my bed and I had to hold tight not to fall,” said Valentina Ryabchevskaya, a Donetsk resident, describing a recent shelling near her home. “Windows were shaking, doors in cabinets opened. It’s terrible how they treat people.”
The barrage has intensified this week, with shells hitting apartment buildings, a school, a bus stop, and the Red Cross office. The United Nations and the European Union voiced concern about the fighting that threatens to derail a fragile truce that has held in most other areas in eastern Ukraine since it was declared on Sept. 5.
Negotiators representing Russia, Ukraine, pro-Russian rebels and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe tried to consolidate the cease-fire with a follow-up agreement to create a buffer zone that requested each party to pull its artillery 15 kilometers (9 miles) back from the frontline.