Survivors began to be found on Thursday from the rubble of the blown up theater where more than 1,000 Ukrainians, including children, were taking shelter in Mariupol - but rescues were prevented hindered by continued Russian air strikes.
“It is a miracle,” Illia Ponomarenko of Kyiv Independent tweeted. At least 130 civilians had been rescued from the rubble by Thursday afternoon, she said.
The local council in Mariupol - the city hardest hit by Russia's three-week war - said more than 1,000 people, mostly women and children, had taken shelter in the bombed-out theater on Sunday. end of Wednesday.
Satellite images show the word "Children" written in large Russian on the sidewalks in front and behind the once opulent theater - and local TV has reported that it is a mass shelter less than an hour before the attack.
While the three-story building appears to have been razed, "the bomb shelter is still intact," mayor adviser Petro Andrushchenko told Reuters by phone.
“Now the wreckage is being cleaned up. There are survivors,” he said, adding that they did not yet know how many - but no bodies had been found 24 hours after the attack.
Ukrainian Member of Parliament Sergiy Taruta also noted in a Facebook post that people are coming back to life, writing, "Finally good news from Mariupol!"
Kyrylenko said Russian air strikes also hit a swimming pool complex in the city of Mariupol.
“Now there are women, including pregnant ones and children, under the rubble there. It's total terrorism!" official said.
Emergency services have struggled to reach the seemingly intact bomb shelter because the entrance has been destroyed - and because attacks are still underway on a city that the International Red Cross has released. is as horrifying as “the end of the world”.
The city council said: “It is still impossible to estimate the scale of this terrible and inhuman act, as Russian troops continue to bombard residential areas of the city” – claiming that “on average 50 to 100 bombs are dropped” every day.
The council said: "There are no words to describe the level of cruelty ... It is clear that the sole objective of the Russian military is the genocide of the Ukrainian people."
“Information about the victims is still being clarified,” the council said in its latest update on Thursday, saying that “mainly women, children and the elderly” have been hiding there “due to under constant shelling”.
Days before the attack, local media had filmed women and children crammed inside the darkened building with the sound of babies crying. That crew also estimated there were about 1,000 people there.
“This raises serious concerns about what the intended goals of the Russians are in a city where the population is living,” said Belkis Wille, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. usually besieged for days.”
In his latest video speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that "the Russian plane deliberately dropped a large bomb" on the theater.
Ukrainian soldiers and firefighters said it was a miracle that those people survived the shelling.
“Citizens of Russia! How is your blockade of Mariupol different from the blockade of Leningrad during the Second World War?" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked.
The president's office also reported shelling and air strikes across the country during the night, including in the Kiev suburbs of Kalynivka and Brovary.
Ukraine says Russian forces are increasingly using artillery and air strikes as a means of their attack.
The General Staff of Ukraine said that "the enemy, unsuccessfully in ground operations, continues to carry out missile and bomb attacks on infrastructure and densely populated areas of cities." Ukraine.”
Despite ample evidence, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Thursday dismissed the theater bombing as a "lie".
“The Russian armed forces never bomb towns and cities,” she told a news conference.