Narrow escape for 10 Punjab students in missile attack on Ukraine's Kharkiv

Tribune News Service

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, March 1

Even as a Karnataka-based student of Kharkiv National Medical University lost his life today in the war-hit city, it was a narrow escape for about 10 students from Punjab who had just started the journey from Kharkiv to Uzhhorod town, located near Hungary border. Among them was MBBS student Jasmine Kaur, who hails from the Rail Vihar area of Jalandhar. She along with her classmates, who were holed up in the basement of their apartment, were going in two taxis around 8 am (Ukraine time) to the Kharkiv railway station.

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“Just five minutes after we started, a missile hit the area. The deafening sound shook us all. With a great difficulty, we completed the 15-minute journey to the railway station,” she said. Her father Pavittar Singh, who is LIC branch manager in Jalandhar, said, “The attack took place at a time when there was curfew relaxation. I thanked the Almighty a million times that my daughter is safe.” Pavittar Singh said he had been coordinating with a travel agent in Ukraine for the past two days to know about the best way out from Kharkiv. “I still have prayers on my lips as I want her to reach Hungary as quickly as possible. After the 15-hour train journey, she has to take another taxi and walk down a few kilometres before she crosses the border,” he said.

A total of 150 students reportedly managed to board trains this morning. “There were three trains from Kharkiv to different places. My son Shivang, too, boarded a train for Lviv. He was in the basement of a building when the missile attack took place in Kharkiv,” said his father Pushpinder Prashar.

However, all students could not leave Kharkiv today. Monika Batra, the mother of an MBBS student from Kapurthala, said, “By the time my daughter got out from a bunker in Kharkiv, there were blasts in the area and she called us up. She was petrified and we advised her to cancel her travel plans for today.”

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