The Daily Signal: Civilians caught in the crossfire as the war in Ukraine escalates

Published Feb. 2, 2017 at 10:52 am

Rescue workers give food to local residents in the Ukrainian town of Avdiyivka on February 1, 2017 as government forces and Russian-backed separatists exchanged mortar and rocket fire for a fourth day around the flashpoint eastern town of Avdiyivka just north of the rebels' de facto capital Donetsk. The death toll from the latest escalation in fighting in Ukraine rose to 19 on February 1 as international alarm rang out over the spike in bloodshed in the European Union's back yard.

Photo by AFP

Artillery and rockets have been raining down on the front-line town of Avdiyivka in eastern Ukraine since Jan. 29, leaving 16,000 civilians, including 2,000 children, without heat, electricity, or clean water as temperatures dipped to 20 degrees below zero Celsius, or about minus 4 Fahrenheit.

“[The] recent intensification of hostilities on the contact line in eastern Ukraine has had a very heavy impact on the local population,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement on Feb. 1. “The weather conditions make the negative impact even more severe.”