Hospital under fire in rebel-held Ukraine

“I couldn’t care less whether we’re under the Ukrainians or the separatists. I just want peace,” Irina, a war-weary doctor in rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine, said as shelling boomed close to her hospital.

Irina, who declined to give her surname, said she had backed the pro-Western government that came to power after the ouster of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych a year ago.

But these days, the 40-something year old resident of the separatists’ self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic simply wants the fighting to end.

“I did support pro-European ideas during the protests in Kiev (against Yanukovych) and I’ve always been a Ukrainian patriot. But today, it’s not important to me any more,” she said. “I don’t care if I become Russian or stay Ukrainian, as long as the war ends.”

Irina works in Dokuchaevsk, a small town of 24,000 residents based around a mine extracting dolomite, a mineral used in the metals industry, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

The town was taken over by pro-Russian separatists ahead of the Minsk peace talks in September that set a demarcation line. Rebels are positioned in the town, but AFP reporters did not hear them shooting.

The hospital had to close its maternity ward and evacuate the patients after Grad rockets landed in the courtyard on Saturday, blowing the glass out of all the windows, the staff said.

The windows are now covered in plastic sheeting.

The 10-month war between government forces and the pro-Russian rebels has crept up to Dokuchaevsk in recent weeks, with the nearest government positions just 10 kilometres away as the crow flies.

Since January the shelling has become more intense, hospital officials said.

“This is the third time that our hospital has come under shellfire,” said chief doctor Sergei Petrovich.

It was not clear why the area around the hospital was being shelled and whether rebels were returning fire from the town.

There are currently around 60 patients in the hospital, while previously there were up to 200.

The facility receives medicine as humanitarian aid, relying mainly on international organisations such as Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the International Red Cross.

The surgery ward also has two generators which it relies on during power cuts caused by shelling.

On Tuesday, AFP journalists heard a barrage of incoming rocket fire but it was not clear where it landed.

“We do have a large cellar that could be used as a shelter, but we never know when the shells are going to fall. So what can we do?” Petrovich said with a helpless air.

Nadezhda Zhdanova, 76, is one of the patients still at the hospital. She was brought in on February 5 after suffering shrapnel wounds.

“My house was totally destroyed, I heard a huge noise and then after that I don’t remember anything,” she said, her head swathed in bandages and her face scored with cuts. Her leg and left hand were swollen.

Unable to walk and confined to her bed by her injuries, Zhdanova was hard of hearing, meaning she could not hear the thud of rocket fire.

– ‘They fire at us every day’ –

Not far from the hospital, close to a market, Vladimir Ivanovich, aged 47, was hanging plastic sheeting over his windows.

“Here they fire at us every day. When we can, we go and shelter in the cellar, but we don’t always have time,” he said.

All the windows of the four-storey building where he lives in the centre of Dokuchaevsk were shattered, but luckily no one had died.

Ivanovich said that was because many residents had fled the town in late January after several people were killed in the attempt by government forces to wrest the town from the rebels.

Irina, the doctor, estimated that “only around a third of the population are left in Dokuchaevsk. The others have fled.”