In Ukraine, surviving when your home is blasted
ABC News
The explosions started in the middle of the night, shaking the house to its foundations
VELYKA KOSTROMKA, Ukraine -- The explosions started in the middle of the night, shaking the house to its foundations. Roof timbers splintered and windows shattered, sending shards of glass hurtling above three sleeping children into the opposite wall.
It was around 2 a.m. and Iryna Martsyniuk had stayed up late watching a video on her computer while her children slept. She didn’t know what was hitting her house —- mortars, rockets or missiles. All she knew was that, in the dead of night, everything was exploding.
It wasn’t the first time the Ukrainian village of Velyka Kostromka, just a few kilometers (miles) from the southern front line in the war in Ukraine, was being hit. But Thursday’s early morning attack was the most intense and most widespread.
Around 20 houses were damaged, including three irreparably, and two people were lightly injured, said Olha Shaytanova, the head of the village. Later in the day, explosives experts blew up at least one undetonated device they found embedded in a field. Remnants of other devices lay scattered in the village.