Russian forces targeted a theater where “hundreds” of civilians were hiding in the besieged port city of Mariupol on Wednesday, local authorities and Ukraine’s foreign minister said. No deaths or injuries were reported.
“Now the building is completely destroyed.” tweeted Minister Dmitry Kuleba along with an alleged photograph of the destroyed theatre. “The Russians couldn’t have been unaware that this was a civilian shelter.”
View of the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre, destroyed by an airstrike during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine, in this handout photo obtained by Reuters on March 16, 2022. Donetsk Regional Civil-Military Administration/Handout via REUTERS
The Mariupol City Council reported on Telegram that Russia “purposefully destroyed the Drama Theater, where hundreds of people are hiding.” The council said the aircraft dropped the bomb on the building, destroying the theater’s “central area” and “the entrance to the bomb shelter in the building.”
“The scale of this terrible and inhumane act cannot yet be assessed,” the city council said in a Telegram message.
Another images as well as video ostensibly showing the aftermath of the strike were posted on social media.
Russia denies attacking civilians. The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces did not strike the building and blamed the attack on the Azov Battalion, a far-right Ukrainian militia, RIA reported.
Mariupol, a southern seaport of 430,000, has become a symbol of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to crush democratic Ukraine, as well as fierce resistance on the ground.
For almost three weeks after the start of the war in Russia, two Associated Press journalists were the only international media present in Mariupol chronicling its fall into chaos and despair. The city is now surrounded by Russian soldiers who are slowly, in one explosion, squeezing the life out of it.
Several calls for humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians fell on deaf ears until Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that some 30,000 people had fled in car convoys. Air strikes and shells hit the maternity hospital, the fire department, residential buildings, the church, the field near the school. It is estimated that the remaining hundreds of thousands simply have nowhere to go.
Evacuees from Mariupol upon arrival at the car park of a shopping center on the outskirts of the city of Zaporozhye, which is now a registration center for displaced persons, March 16, 2022. EMRE KAILAK/AFP via Getty Images
Surrounding roads are mined and the port is blocked. Food is running out, and the Russians have thwarted humanitarian efforts to deliver it. Electricity is mostly off and water is scarce, with residents melting snow to drink. Some parents have even left their newborns in the hospital, perhaps hoping to give them a chance to live in one place with decent electricity and water.
People burn broken pieces of furniture in makeshift grills to warm their hands in the cold and cook what little is left. The grills themselves are built from what is in abundance: bricks and shards of metal strewn across the streets from ruined buildings.
Death is everywhere. Local authorities have counted over 2,500 dead during the siege, but many of the bodies cannot be counted because of the endless shelling. They told the families to leave their dead outside on the streets because it was too dangerous to have a funeral.
Many of the deaths documented by the AP were of children and mothers, despite Russian claims that civilians were not targeted. Doctors say that for every wounded Ukrainian soldier, there are 10 civilians.
“They have a clear order to hold Mariupol hostage, mock it, constantly bomb and shell,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on March 10.
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