ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — Government forces trapped in a strategic railway hub in eastern Ukraine came under heavy assault on Friday as Russian-backed rebel fighters sought to exploit the window ahead of a weekend cease-fire.
Artillery shelling and gunfire reverberated in the area around the railway hub, Debaltseve, just south of this front-line town of Artemivsk, where rebel troops reportedly severed the last land route into town, leaving government forces surrounded. At least 18 people were reported to have died.
In a hospital courtyard here, ambulance crews hurriedly wheeled about bloodied, freshly wounded soldiers.
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The casualties flowed in from positions along the road. Soldiers were wounded by shrapnel from mortars and rockets, from gunfire and in explosions when their vehicles hit mines.
In one explosion, one soldier suffered damage to both eyes and “will probably be blind,” Ms. Neschadym said.
From Jan. 6 until Feb. 11, she said, the hospital treated 1,004 wounded soldiers, or about 46 per day, while overnight Thursday to Friday after the cease-fire signing, doctors treated 97 wounded soldiers in a frantic, bloody scene. By Friday, most of the wounded had been evacuated further from the front, but a stack of bloody stretchers remained in the hospital hallway.
