By Ben Kerrigan-
Russian forces have bombed a theatre in the besieged city of Maripol where hundreds of civilians, including children, were sheltering in the encircled port city of Mariupol on Wednesday, the city council said.
Ukrainian cities were subjected to further bombardment on Wednesday, despite the optimism optimism expressed at peace talks to negotiate an end to the bloodshed.
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Officials said it is impossible to know how many people were killed or injured in the attack on the Mariupol Drama Theatre because the shelling of residential areas continues in the city, meaning rescuers can’t reach those in the rubble.
An estimated 1,000 civilians were hiding in the building designated as a shelter for the displaced, including children and elderly people
Satellite imagery from Monday showed the word ‘children’ written in large white letters in Russian in front of and behind the theatre building in an apparent effort to stave off any attack by Putin’s forces.
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Two days later, Russian forces bombed the theatre where hundreds were sheltering, with Ukraine condemning the attack as a war crime.
After the Russian bombing, the central part of the theatre collapsed and debris blocked the entrance to the bomb shelter located inside the building, the city council said.
Petro Andruishchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said the theatre was the city’s largest shelter ‘in number and size’.
Ukrainian officials also accused Russian forces of shelling a convoy of cars of civilians fleeing the city, wounding at least five people, including a child.
Local officials shared photos and videos of the aftermath of the alleged attack. “Heavy artillery of the enemy forces fired on a convoy of civilians moving along the highway towards Zaporizhzhia,” the governor of the region, Oleksandr Starukh, said in an online post.
The Ukrainian military also reported the strike in a separate statement. Work was under way to confirm the number of casualties, it said. Authorities also shared a photo of a child it said had been wounded in the attack.
More than 400 people, whom Ukrainian authorities have compared to hostages, remain trapped in a Mariupol hospital seized by Russian forces.
“It is impossible to get out of the hospital,” one employee said on the Telegram social media platform. “They shoot hard, we sit in the basement. Cars have not been able to drive to the hospital for two days. High-rise buildings are burning around … Russians rushed 400 people from neighbouring houses to our hospital. We can’t leave.”
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