Donetsk Holds Mourning Ceremony for Victims of Ukraine Army’s Missile Strikes
DONETSK, August 24 (RIA Novosti) – A mourning ceremony for the victims of the Ukrainian Army’s recent missile strikes against Donetsk was held Sunday in the besieged city as fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported on the ground.
The service for the dead was timed to the Independence Day celebrations across Ukraine. In the capital city Kiev, the country’s main holiday since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was marked with a military parade in a bid to boost the nation’s morale amid the exhausting operation in the southeast.
For months Donetsk has been the scene of the heaviest fighting between the local independence supporters and pro-government troops that have been pounding indiscriminately militia’s positions and residential quarters across the city.
The commemorative ceremony in Donetsk came in the wake of reports about the rising death toll of the Army’s missile attacks against the city. On Saturday, a France Press correspondent in Donetsk said he had seen the bodies of six killed civilians, including a child.
The service was held near a memorial to Nazi victims in downtown Donetsk. Several dozens of people released black balloons into the air and laid flowers at the memorial as artillery fire was heard in the distance. City authorities also cancelled all Independence Day celebrations.
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http://en.ria.ru/world/20140824/192293424/Donetsk-Holds-Mourning-Ceremony-for-Victims-of-Ukraine-Armys.html
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Donetsk: Photos Of A Besieged City Draining Of Life
(CNN) -- Bodies torn apart by the weapons of war. The bloody corpse of a man hit by shelling as he walked under trees, a shopkeeper's mutilated body in front of her store, a broom lying nearby.
Some three months after pro-Russian rebels declared an independent "Donetsk People's Republic," Ukrainian government forces are encircling the city of Donetsk.
Photojournalist Jonathan Alpeyrie was in the city in May and returned two weeks ago to find it battle-scarred and slowly draining of life as its people flee.
It's always hard when we see people getting killed where you are, that's tough, because they're just regular people and they're not really involved in the war.
The images he has captured show the anguish of the immediate aftermath of shelling -- the relatives of victims, people left homeless, the dead. Others depict those left behind sheltering in Soviet or WWII-era cellars and boarded-up buildings as their homes are engulfed by the conflict.
The photographs, many too graphic to show here, leave no doubt about the true horror of the destructive conflict.
"If you go north of the city towards the airport you have entire areas that are no-man's land -- they are not controlled by anybody and they are being shelled daily ... with mortars and tanks," Alpeyrie tells CNN.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/23/world/europe/ukraine-donetsk-siege-alpeyrie/
