Donetsk residents are all players in a terrible lottery

Dmitry Limonov's grave in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Credit: ITV News
  • By John Angier - ITV News senior foreign editor

They buried Dmitry Limonov in a line of fresh graves in an overgrown cemetery on the outskirts of Donetsk. His mother sobbed throughout: "My boy, my beautiful boy, what am I going to do without you?" Artillery thudded in the distance over the city. The gravediggers covered his coffin quickly and moved on.

We told Dmitry's story on ITV News on Monday. He was a young man of 23 who only three weeks before had seen the birth of his first child, a little girl called Milana. On Sunday, Dmitry went out to get some baby milk. As he walked along the street, a shell landed next to him. His death leaves a wife without a husband and a daughter without a father.

The twisted remains of a car that was hit by a shell in Donetsk. Credit: ITV News

This is a civil war which is killing civilians with appalling randomness. Shells and rockets from both sides fall frequently in residential areas. Today we filmed at a hospital which had been hit. The body of a boy lay outside under a sheet, one of at least three dead.

At least three people were killed when a shell landed outside this hospital in Donetsk. Credit: ITV News

In a nearby hospital we found some of the injured: medical staff who had been hurt while working to help others. On our return journey, we passed a junction for the third time today. This time the wreckage of a car was spread across the road next to a smoking crater. Inside were the remains of two people: passers-by just as Dmitry had been, and like him, victims of this terrible lottery.