The embattled city Mariupol on Thursday woke up to a rare piece of possible good news, as house-to-house fighting and humanitarian disaster in the Azov Sea port ground on.
Serhy Taruta, head of the Donetsk regional administration, in a statement said preliminary reports from rescuers responding to a devastating Russian Federation (RF) air force bombing of Mariupol’s city theater, in which as many as 1,000 refugees had taken shelter, show that casualties were minimal and no one was killed.
A RF pilot dropped at least one bomb on the structure on Wednesday afternoon. Images from the site, in the center of Mariupol’s old city, showed the Stalin-era building was flattened.
Taruta said, without providing additional evidence, that people sheltering in the theater were, at the time of the strike, in underground shelters. Rescuers were still clearing blocked some blocked shelter entrances, but as yet no fatalities from the strike have been reported. He described the outcome as “miraculous”.
Tartuta’s upbeat comment came as other Ukrainian officials made public new details of the humanitarian disaster in progress in Mariupol. RF ground forces cut Mariupol off from the rest of the country in the first days of the war. For more than a week, according to eyewitnesses, RF forces have systematically shelled and bombed civilian homes and businesses. Kyiv has accused the Kremlin of trying to force the city to surrender by blasting civilians into submission.
According to confirmed news reports and social media from inside the city, civilians have been without electricity, heat, and medical supplies for two weeks, and without food and clean water for the last two days. RF forces on Tuesday and Wednesday permitted some 6,000 refugees to leave Mariupol, but have prevented food and other supplies from going in, since the beginning of the blockade.
Vadym Denysenko, an Interior Ministry senior advisor, in a statement said more than 90 percent of Mariupol’s buildings are destroyed or damaged.
A statement from the Azov National Guard Regiment, one of the backbone units of Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) defenses of the city, vowed UAF fighters would hold positions “to the last ounce of our strength.” The statement claimed RF forces were suffering serious losses in the fighting.
