Embattled residents at Ukraine front desperate for water

Water supplies cut in October; shelling makes it hard to repair power lines vital to pump water

BAKHMUT - First Ms Valentyna's gas supply was cut when Russia's invasion came to Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region. Then shelling destroyed power lines. By August, she and her daughter Natalia no longer had water.

As the fighting intensified making the battle for the city the longest and most grinding of the nearly year-long war - the pair replaced gas and electricity with wood and coal.

But when it became too dangerous to reach the well in their eastern neighbourhood, which has seen some of the worst fighting in the war, they finally undertook the treacherous journey across the Bakhmutovka River to flee the besieged city.

"A week ago it was possible to live there, but not any more," said Ms Natalia, 52, as she and her 73-year-old mother waited at a humanitarian hub to be evacuated.

They are just two among some 8,000 Bakhmut residents whose precarious existence in the city has been thrown into even greater uncertainty since water supplies were fully cut in October.