Ukraine resort town crumbles under frontline shells

SHYROKYNE: A year ago, the building housed a children's seaside camp, but now a two-metre blast hole gapes in its whitewashed wall.
Once a popular holiday resort, the village of Shyrokyne on the Azov Sea now sits on the frontline of fighting that rumbles on despite a supposed ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.
"It was a tank shell," said one Ukrainian soldier, pointing at the black hole alongside a flower mosaic on the Sunshine summer camp, a few dozen metres (yards) from the beach.
Holiday homes stand with their windows broken in the village shaken by daily fire between Ukrainian government troops and the pro-Russian rebels who control much of the east.
Trees that once lined the road to the beach are shredded by shell blasts and the benches and children's swings are damaged.
"Instead of saying hello, they fire at us," said one Ukrainian soldier, going by the nom de guerre Geologist, a tall bald man of 54.
About 10km from the strategic port of Mariupol, the biggest remaining government-held city in the conflict zone, Shyrokyne is the latest flash point in a year-long conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people.
Six soldiers were killed on Tuesday in a flare-up of the fighting in the east.
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters at noon on Thursday that six more Ukrainian soldiers had been injured in the previous 24 hours.
Talks to shift the guns
Ceasefire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe visited Shyrokyne on Tuesday and Wednesday. They are calling for Shyrokyne to be demilitarised to protect civilians.
A Russian military representative monitoring the ceasefire, Alexander Lentsov, said Wednesday that the Russian and Ukrainian sides had agreed to pull back their big guns 15km on each side to make a buffer zone, Russian news agencies reported.
OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw told reporters on Thursday there were "very intensive talks" underway but could not say whether such a withdrawal was close.
He said the humanitarian situation was "dire" with a "rapidly increasing food crisis" in parts of the conflict zone, where civilians lack drinking water and medical supplies.
The Ukrainian army has so far refused to withdraw its guns, saying it does not trust the rebels to do likewise. Some have even accused the OSCE of cooperating with the rebels.
"The rebels take advantage of the pause in the fighting when the monitors come to the village. Behind the OSCE cars there come trucks of ammunition" for the pro-Russian side, said one Ukrainian soldier in Shyrokyne, going by the name Thor.
"When the monitors leave, the rebels start firing on our positions."
Playing darts in the wreckage
Ukrainian soldiers have set up one such position in the Sunshine holiday resort.
During pauses in the bombardments they play darts in a room decorated with a poster for Goodbye Lenin, a cult film on the end of communism.
Broken glass crunches underfoot in the canteen, where a sign still hangs reading "Bon appetit".
"The enemy positions are 500m or 600m from ours," says one Ukrainian commander, pointing to a school in the distance where he says pro-Russian forces have set up.
"Sometimes in the night they get as close as 200m," says another weary-looking soldier of 37, dressed in camouflage gear and a black woolly hat.
He pointed to a crater in the ground, blasted out, he said, by an 82mm mortar shell.
"They are firing on us," he said. "But we are ready to defend ourselves." – AFP