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Ukraine Invasion: Stranded, Traumatised African Students Say Every Sound Makes Them Tense, Think It’s Another Bomb

The students are already mentally exhausted and are seeking help to leave their current condition for a safer and saner environment.

Some foreign students of the Sumy State University, Ukraine have cried out for help, in a video shared online.
 
The students, who are Africans, some of whom are Nigerians, said they have been stranded in their school, shuttling between hostels and bomb shelters whenever they get alerts of air raids.

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According to a voice in the video, the students are already mentally exhausted and are seeking help to leave their current condition for a safer and saner environment. 
 
They said, “We the students of Sumy State University, we are tired and we are exhausted. We are physically tired running up and down from our hostel rooms to the bomb shelters almost every three to four hours because we get alerts of air raids or street fights.
 
“We are mentally exhausted thinking that the day we go out to buy food or at least stand in line to buy food, they may drop a bomb or a missile and we will not be able to get back to our hostels for us to find a way out to go home.
 


“So, we are mentally exhausted because we cannot steady ourselves. We are constantly fidgeting, looking over our shoulders, looking at the sky whenever we are outside hoping that nothing is coming down on us and then emotionally, so many of us have been crying in our rooms.
“So many of us are just exhausted, we are sad, traumatised, hungry; any little sound makes us jump or we jump because we think that it's an explosion somewhere even if it's just the door shutting.
 
“We need help out of here so we can find a way to be safe and take care of our mental health because we cannot be in this situation any longer.”
 
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has entered its eighth day, has created a refugee exodus and turned Russia into a global pariah in the worlds of finance, diplomacy and sports.
 
The UN has opened a probe into alleged war crimes, as the Russian military bombards cities in Ukraine with shells and missiles, forcing civilians to cower in basements.