Lviv: More than 200 children evacuated from an orphanage in Ukraine's conflict zone arrived in the western city of Lviv on Saturday after a 24-hour train journey with their carers.
The 215 children, ranging from toddlers to teenagers, left their orphanage in Zaporizhzhia, in southeast Ukraine, on the day Russian troops attacked a nearby nuclear power station.
"My heart is being torn apart," said Olha Kucher, director of the Zaporizhzhia Central Christian Orphanage. Then she started sobbing. "I'm sorry . . . I simply lack words. And I feel so sorry for these children. They're so young."
As night fell and the temperature plunged, the children waited patiently on a platform at Lviv train station, the older ones looking after the young, while orphanage staff carefully counted them all.
We don't want to leave Ukraine - we love it," she said. "But unfortunately we must leave."
As the last of the children climbed on the buses, Kucher added: "Putin is simply killing people . . . I don't understand why the Russian people can't believe that we're being bombarded - that we and our children are being killed."