INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Drying blood was smeared across a billboard advertising electronics and black smoke billowed over the tangled metal remains of a supermarket
town."Everyone started running
We turn around and everything is burning," the 25-year-old said."I started running one way and my colleague ran the other way," she told
kilometers from advancing Russian forces.President Volodymyr Zelensky said people had been trapped under the rubble and vowed that "Russia
will be held accountable for this terror."One man in shorts and a T-shirt hurled expletives at police as he barged through a cordon towards
body bags lined up by rescue workers, apparently in search of a missing relative.Nearby, a crying woman with a handkerchief over her mouth
was appealing to police for any information about a missing child relative.Natalia, who lives in a Soviet-era apartment building with a
leafy courtyard just next to the market was watching television when the blast blew out the windows of her balcony."Bang is a mild way of
putting it," the 51-year-old in a red shirt and dyed black hair told AFP.AFP reporters saw dozens of people running from the scene as police
warned of a potential second strike.Plumes of black smoke rose from the ruins of the large shopping complex as firefighters worked to
extinguish the blaze.Nearby, a woman with a blood-soaked shirt and a bleeding leg was crying outside a residential building surrounded by
in the area were also audible around the town located in the eastern Donetsk region.Russia has long seen the mining region as a key prize,
and has redoubled its offensive there after claiming to have annexed it late in 2022.Russian troops recently claimed to have captured a
Kostyantynivka just one week ago, escaping fighting that she told AFP was even scarier.Authorities had given Natalia the option of leaving
the war-battered region entirely but she felt she had no options."The question is: Where to and with what money?" she said, the sounds of
nearby shelling echoing in the distance.
