In Ukraine, a Lifetime of Trauma Buried in the Ground

W460

The youngsters came across the object. They took pictures on their phones. They threw it in the air. It landed and blew up. And just like that, five children were injured, some severely, and two were dead.

It is a horror story of terrible familiarity in war -- curiosity leading to child fatalities from unexploded munitions -- and now it has come to eastern Ukraine. 

"It wasn't me. It was my friends that started playing with it," pleads Denis, a 13-year-old with messy blonde hair, who has been lying on his bed in Donetsk hospital for almost two months -- crying, tormented, traumatised.

He can barely move. His chest and right arm are in plaster, his right leg in a heavy steel brace.

The rest of his body is covered in burns and scars, including one that stretches 20 centimetres along his leg.

The day that will have such a profound impact on the rest of his life was October 3. 

He was fooling around with friends in an abandoned quarry and remembers a "very loud whistling" in his ears before he found himself on the ground, looking over at two lifeless friends. 

"One was right next to me. Something had gone through his eye right into the brain," he says quietly.

Denis took the worst injuries of those that survived -- a tibia shattered by the blast which doctors initially thought would mean his leg would have to be partially amputated. 

"His body and head were lacerated by foreign objects, and there was brain damage," said his doctor, Vladimir Voropayev. 

Not to mention the psychological damage of a tragedy "he will remember for the rest of his life". 

Several months more hospitalisation, followed by physiotherapy, await him still. 

 

- The most curious - 

Every day since April, residential areas in the towns and villages of eastern Ukraine have been bombarded by shells in the crossfire between government and rebel forces. 

Each time, residents find unexploded rockets and munitions lying around in the debris, in their homes, on the roads or in the middle of fields. 

They kill fewer than the actual shelling -- which is responsible for most of the 4,300 deaths caused by the seven months of fighting. But they are a particular danger for children. 

"They are the most curious and don't have adequate knowledge nor the ability to handle these kinds of objects," said Alexander Oprishchenko, head doctor at the Donetsk hospital. 

Two other children are under his care. They threw a shell into a ditch to clear the road. 

The rebel-controlled local authorities have seven de-miners who clear between 10 and 15 shells per day. 

On Tuesday, they were out inspecting the carcass of a rocket that had been lodged in the pavement in a residential district of the city for three days. 

"We have the option of exploding suspect objects where they lie, but we avoid that because these are residential zones," says Ilia, a 24-year-old member of the team. 

They are usually forced to dig around it and carefully place it on a truck before driving 20 kilometres (12 miles) outside Donetsk for the destruction. 

Ilia is interrupted by his colleague: "It's alright -- it's already exploded."

Back in the hospital, Denis manages a smile at the thought of one day returning to school and playing football. 

Away from the room, his doctor struggles to remain positive: "For now, everything appears to be going well, but it's very hard to know if this child will be alright."

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