'Pick up my leg': With paramedics as they treat woman near Ukraine's frontline during aerial attack

There are days in Bakhmut that are more difficult than others – although no day is easy in this battered city. 

Once home to 100,000 people, it’s now a military objective for the Russian army, the gateway to key industrial cities in eastern Ukraine.

But the city has become a major obstacle for Russian generals, who have been pounding its neighbourhoods with rockets and shells

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Members of the city’s ambulance crew deal with the human consequences of this, and we followed them to the outskirts of Bakhmut, several kilometres from the front line.

The paramedics found a woman lying on the side of the road with clouds of smoke billowing behind her.

Her chest was bleeding and the tips of her shoes had been torn off.

“Pick up my leg,” she screamed, before calling out to her partner. “Vova!”

“Just a minute, Rimma, they will help you,” he replied.

‘The earth shook as the…