An image released by Mariupol City Council in the last hours shows a whole section of the three-storey grand theater collapsed 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. But more dramatic is another image, before the bombing.
For days before the Russian attack, the place was being used as a refuge and, following news of rockets falling into civilian areas, the authorities decided to take precautions.
In this regard, they wrote on the pavement on the outside of the elegant theater, with large letters visible from satellites, the word “Children” in Russian.
As proof of this, the space technology company Maxar released the image it captured on Monday, at least 48 hours before the attack.
On both sides of the building it is written “DETI”.
According to the first reports, there were “over a thousand” people in the place, mostly women and children.
The rubble buried the entrance to the shelter in the theater and the number of victims was not clear, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of Donestk's regional government, told Telegram. 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. He didn't elaborate.
It wasn't the only possible war crime in the city. Russian airstrikes also hit a municipal swimming pool compound in Mariupol where civilians, including women and children, were sheltered, Kyrylenko said. “Now there are pregnant women and women with children under the rubble there,” she wrote, although the number of victims was initially unknown.
But there is hope of finding survivors of the attack. “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.
Russia denied the attack
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.
(With information from AP and Reuters)
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