Ukrainians Flee War -- and Leave their Lives behind

Camping out for now at a children's holiday camp in the east Ukrainian town of Svyatogirsk, Oleksandr Khodor tots up everything he was forced to leave behind.

"In one fell swoop, I lost everything," Khodor, 34, told AFP.

As the shelling became unbearable in recent days around his hometown of Debaltseve, Khodor realized he had no option but to leave all he had behind -- and quickly.

Since January 12 he had been hiding from the continual bombardments in a basement with his wife and two small children.

But as rebel fighters tightened the noose around the strategic Ukrainian-controlled town a neighbor told him that volunteers were on their way to evacuate civilians.

All the family had to do was reach the assembly point in front of the town hall.

"There were explosions some 20 meters (yards) from us. We sprinted to the town hall," Khodor recounted.

"I can't remember how we managed. When we got there and were waiting for the buses, they started firing at the town hall too."

As the bombardments rained around them, one of the bus drivers became frightened and refused to set off on the perilous journey.

Seeing no other option, Khodor took the wheel of the vehicle.

"When your life and the life of your loved ones is threatened you could even work out how to fly an airplane," he said with a melancholy expression.

As he drove towards safety, however, he knew he was leaving his parents-- who live on the other side of town -- behind.

"I couldn't even get to see them. It was inaccessible," he said.

"I left everything behind for the sake of my children. If I'd been alone I would have stayed."

Khodor and his family are among a growing number of displaced people who have flocked to this holiday camp some 100 kilometers (around 65 miles) from Debaltseve in recent days.

"We have 340 refugees, including 12 children under the age of three," said Lyudmila Kravchuk, 77, the director of the camp.

"It's difficult to see all this, to see the tears of the people, their uncertainty because they don't know what is coming," she said.

The camp has received some humanitarian aid from the charity of Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov, an oligarch originally from Donetsk, and is trying as best it can to cater for the new arrivals.

"We're going to carry on feeding them as much as we can," said Kravchuk.

Displaced Tatiana Miroshnichenko, 64, says that she'll soon be moving even further on to stay with her son in Kiev.

"I didn't want to flee and leave my husband behind. We have been married for 41 years but he told me that he would feel better if I was safe," she said.

Back in Debaltseve, a railway hub that has changed hands between the rebels and government, the fighting is fierce.

"When the government authorities came back, then life got back closer to normal," Miroshnichenko said. "We received our pensions, people got paid, there was a semblance of normalcy."

While the boom of occasional firing never died down entirely, the surge in shelling over the past few days made life impossible.

"For 10 days now the adults and children have been living underground, without electricity, without heating, without food," she said.

"Why do we have to suffer this cold, this hunger, this destruction?"