Racing for safety, Ukrainians meet new perils.

Russian forces attacked civilian areas in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as terrified residents joined an exodus of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing westward, heeding warnings that Russian troops were massing for a major assault.

On Sunday morning, two residential buildings and a school were hit in Sievierodonetsk, in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, though no casualties were reported. And a barrage of Russian strikes rained down on the airport in Dnipro in east-central Ukraine, wounding five Ukrainian rescue workers, a local official said.

Analysts predict Russian troops, refocusing on the east after being thwarted in the capital, will carry out a major offensive stretching from Dnipro to Izium, a city almost 150 miles northeast where fighting has already been heavy, U.S. military officials said Sunday. Satellite images showed hundreds of military vehicles moving through the town of Velykyi Burluk toward Izium on Friday. Read more

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