\n Ukraine claimed Thursday that Russia had destroyed a theatre harbouring more than a thousand people in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, with the toll as yet unknown.\n<\/p>\n
\n Officials posted images that appeared to show the once gleaming whitewashed three-storey theatre hollowed out and ablaze, with bricks and scaffolding piled high.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The invaders destroyed the Drama Theatre. A place where more than a thousand people found refuge. We will never forgive this,\" the Mariupol City Council said in a Telegram post.\n<\/p>\n
\n Days before the apparent attack satellite images -- shared by private company Maxar -- clearly showed the words \"DETI\" -- or children in Russian -- etched out in the ground on either side of the building.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko called attack a \"horrifying tragedy.\"the\n<\/p>\n
\n \"People were hiding there. And some said they were lucky to survive, but unfortunately not all were lucky,\" he said in a video message.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The only word to describe what has happened today is genocide, genocide of our nation, our Ukrainian people. But I am confident that the day will come when our beautiful city of Mariupol will rise out of the ruins again.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The city is a key strategic target for Moscow, potentially linking Russian forces in Crimea to the west and the Donbas to the east and cutting off Ukrainian access to the Sea of Azov.\n<\/p>\n
\n For days Russian forces have bombarded the city -- which once had about half a million residents -- cutting power, food and water supplies.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ukrainian officials branded the bombing a war crime.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is impossible to find words to describe the level of cynicism and cruelty, with which Russian invaders are destroying peaceful residents of a Ukrainian city by the sea,\" an official statement read.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, decried Russia's \"cruelty\" and ridiculed those in the West rejecting the idea of a no-fly zone for \"fear of WW3\" with Russia, as they sit \"in a Berlin cafe.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Russia's defence ministry denied that its forces bombed the city and stated the building was destroyed in an explosion set off by Ukraine's nationalist Azov battalion.\n<\/p>\n
\n It claimed \"peaceful civilians could be held hostage\" at the site.\n<\/p>\n
\n Moscow has already blamed the military unit for last week's bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, which sparked an international outcry.\n<\/p>\n
\n Human rights groups said the picture in Mariupol was still unclear.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Until we know more, we cannot rule out the possibility of a Ukrainian military target in the area of the theater, but we do know that the theater had been housing at least 500 civilians,\" said Belkis Wille, of Human Rights Watch.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This raises serious concerns about what the intended target was.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n More than 2,000 people have been killed in the besieged city, according to Ukrainian authorities.\n<\/p>\n
\n Residents fleeing the city have spoken of bodies left to rot on the streets, and of navigating minefields and Russian airstrikes in their escape.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russian forces on Wednesday targeted a railway station in the southern Ukraine city of Zaporizhzhia, where thousands of refugees from Mariupol were trying to move further away from the fighting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine claimed Thursday that Russia had destroyed a theatre harbouring more than a thousand people in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, with the toll as yet unknown. Officials posted images that appeared to show the once gleaming whitewashed three-storey theatre hollowed out and ablaze, with bricks and scaffolding piled high. \"The invaders destroyed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-88898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n