'There were explosions at the church, I was ready to say goodbye to life' - Letter from Bucha

After Friday's poignant vigil in Ashbourne a young girl with a gorgeous smile and plaited hair stood proudly in the library beside her handwritten letter on an A3 sheet of paper. Her mother encouraged her to write it to remember the year of terror that saw her family's life forever changed after war encircled her native city of Bucha - scene of some of the worst attacks and atrocities by Russian forces.

16-year-old Anastaysha is here in Ireland with her mother, grandmother while her father continues to fight on the frontlines. This is her letter

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Every time I think about it or talk about it, tears come up, pain builds, the trigger comes.

Let's start from the beginning. My name is Anastaysha. I'm from the Ukraine city of Bucha. On February 16th came the first news of martial law. I had no idea what martial law was. On February 23rd in the evening, my mother's friend and her son from Kyiv came to us as we thought they would bomb the centre of Ukraine. We went to bed on 24th of February.

It's about 10 o'clock (am). I was sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. My mom was in the room, and suddenly we heard a loud sound of a falling helicopter. We ran into the room and looked out the window.

There were about 40 helicopters and a lot of flying rockets. The explosions were muffled and I felt their fall inside me. There were flashes and fire in the sky. And at one moment all our neighbours began to scream, children and adults and we stood frozen in silence.

We quickly packed up I took my doggy, Luna and ran to the church. I remember those words of mine. 'Maybe they won't go outside, suddenly they will kill us. The worst thing was when we ran to the basement, everything was bombing, flying. It was loud and scary. The city was occupied by Russian soldiers. When I ran I realised that my body started to go numb and my legs were giving way, my throat burned and I didn't have enough oxygen. I began to faint.

For two weeks we lived in the church. These were about 25 to 30 people. There was no light, no electricity, no power, it was cold. Across the road there was a children's room in which in that time was a real torture room. They masked, raped and then killed adults, children and babies.

When there were explosions on the territory of the church, I was ready to say goodbye to life. But I wasn't ready to say goodbye to my parents. At first time there was not much food and water. But over time the locals brought and shared food to us. We lived like this for three weeks.

One day my mom said that there would be an evacuation from the city. And I could feel the fear because I could hear the weapons outside. We cut white cotton, like a sign 'ours' and threw it over ourselves. There was dead silence. We stood for six hours but the buses didn't arrive. So mom came back and took the car.

It was scary to see burnt cars with people, dead bodies and destroyed houses. Once we got to Kyiv we took any train there was to Lviv then went to Italy. When we went there, there wasn't any connection with my dad for two weeks. The news from Bucha was terrible. I got lost from my dog. My dad came back home and took her.

Mom, me and grandmom are now in Ireland. We are very grateful for the help and support of the Irish people who separate pain and compassion with us.

Anastaysha.