As part of my mission in Ukraine I traveled to the Black Sea town of Serghiivka with my host, a beautiful 32 year old woman named Alya Cheban. She lives and works as aid volunteer in Kharkiv but returned home to help her aunt who had been injured in the missile attack that has devastated the town.

In her own words:

“On July 1st  a total of three Russian rockets hit a 9 story residential building in our town and a hotel which was hosting a graduation party for a local college. One missile hit the a building that housed a kids daycamp, another landed in the hotel pool. The missile that destroyed the apartment building landed on a pharmacy attached to the building. The official death toll is 28 people although witnesses saw more bodies than that. Rescuers were literally collecting people by pieces. Some had to be buried without some parts of the body. A couple of days ago they found a dog eating a human leg over 1 kilometer way from the impact site. One child died and two more  kids are in a very bad condition in a hospital in Lviv, Their mother died in the attack but their father  is with them and getting ready to move them to Europe for help they can’t get in Ukraine. One of the kids remains in a coma.”

The images below were captured in the hospital in Serghiivka where the survivors are being treated…