Dramatic rescue in Mariupol: they search for survivors in the theater attacked by Russia and claim that the shelter remains standing

A bomb shelter located under a theater in the besieged city of Mariupol resisted what Ukraine claims was a Russian airstrike, and survivors are believed to be trapped underneath, a representative of the mayor's office said on Thursday.

Ukraine accused Russian forces on Wednesday of dropping a powerful bomb on the theater, where it says hundreds of civilians, including many children, were sheltering during the siege of the fenced port city for more than two weeks.

Russia has denied bombing the theater.

“The bomb shelter held. Now the debris is being removed. There are survivors. We still don't know (the number of) victims,” Mayor Petro Andrushchenko's adviser told Reuters over the phone.

For his part, Ukrainian MP Dmytro Gurin, whose parents are trapped in that city, confirmed to the BBC that the bomb shelter has survived.” A few minutes ago we received information that the bomb shelter has survived and that the people who were there have survived,” he told the channel.

According to Andrushchenko, rescue efforts were underway to reach the survivors and establish the number of victims, which is still unknown. Ukrainian MP Sergiy Taruta, former governor of the Donetsk region where Mariupol is located, later said on Facebook that some people had managed to escape the building alive, but did not elaborate.

Up to 1,000 people had taken refuge there, Andryushchenko said. But he denounced that recovery efforts were being hampered by Russian forces that continued to bomb the city.

An image released by Mariupol City Hall showed an entire section of the three-story grand theater demolished after Wednesday night's attack. Hundreds of people had taken refuge in the building, sheltering from the suffocating Russian siege of the strategic port city of the Sea of Azov, which began three weeks ago.

At least since Monday, on the pavement outside the elegant theater there were large letters that formed the word “CHILDREN” in Russian, according to the images distributed by the space technology company Maxar.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that the accusation that Russia had bombed the theater was “a lie.”

He repeated that the Kremlin denies that Russian forces have attacked civilian areas since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. “The Russian armed forces do not bomb towns and cities,” he said at a press conference, despite growing opposing evidence

(With information from Reuters and AP)

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