Bombing intensifies in southern Ukraine frontline town

Residents sit in a volunteer run shelter, providing access to laundry and bathroom facilities where they can warm up, charge their phones, drink hot tea and receive humanitarian aid in the town of Orikhiv, in the Zaporizhzhia region – Copyright AFP/File Aamir QURESHI

Emmanuel PEUCHOT

While having her daily lunch at a canteen in a shelter near Ukraine’s southern front, Galyna Peleshko said Russian bombing has intensified in recent weeks with air strikes and artillery.

The front line lies just seven kilometres from the 71-year-old’s hometown of Orikhiv — a small settlement where only some 1,000 residents remain out of a pre-war population of 15,000.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” Peleshko said, as she finished up a lunch consisting of soup, meat with a side dish and compote.

“After the first explosion I jumped into the corridor and immediately after that there were two more explosions,” she said.

Orikhiv is in a vast plain