"We were sleeping when a deafening sound - an explosion - jolted us out of our beds. The whole building shook," says 22-year-old Soumya Thomas, recalling the moment when she fled her college hostel in Kharkiv several days ago.
Russia has been shelling the Ukrainian city since Saturday, shearing branches off trees, blowing out windows and even hitting schools and homes. Soumya's friend and fellow Indian student, Naveen S Gyangoudar, died on Tuesday when he left the bunker in Kharkiv he had been sheltering in to buy food.
On the night of the shelling, Soumya says she and her friends grabbed "whatever they could" and ran to the grocery store, and then the nearest bunker. All of them, including Naveen, were students of the Kharkiv National Medical University.
"It was dingy, dark and so cold - there was no drinking water, so we had to drink pipe water. Outside, explosions rang out from time to time. And when food ran out, we had to manage with just one meal a day."
Soumya says they stayed in the bunker in the hope that the "Indian government would act soon" and rescue them.
