Ukrainian tanks walk down a street in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine
Highlight
- The death toll could cross 20,000, Mayor Vadim Boychenko has said
- Mayer gives new details of recent allegations made by Ukrainian authorities on Russian forces
- He said, the Russian army has taken many bodies to a big shopping center
The mayor of Ukraine’s port city said on Monday that more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in the Russian siege of the city of Mariupol. The death toll could pass 20,000, as the bodies of Mariupol people lay on the streets in the weeks after the attacks and privatization, he said. Commenting on the dire situation, Mayor Vadim Boychenko also accused the Russian military of blocking weeks of failed humanitarian convoys in the city in an attempt to hide the massacre from the outside world.
Mariupol has been cut off from Russian attacks, which began soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine in late February, and has suffered some of the most brutal attacks of the war.
Boychenko gave new details of recent allegations by Ukrainian authorities that Russian forces brought mobile cremation equipment to Mariupol to dispose of the bodies of siege victims.
Boychenko said the Russian military had moved several bodies to a large shopping center with storage facilities and refrigerators.
“Mobile cremations have come in the form of trucks: you open it, and there’s a pipe inside and these bodies are burned,” he said.
Boychenko said he had multiple sources for his description of the alleged burning of corpses by the Russian military in the city, but did not give details of the sources of his information.
The mayor said about 120,000 citizens in Mariupol are in dire need of food, water, heat and communication.
Boychenko said that only residents who have passed the Russian “filtration camp” are released from the city.
The discovery of large numbers of civilians apparently executed after Russian forces retreated from cities around the capital Kyiv this month has prompted widespread condemnation and accusations from Ukrainians and the West that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials accused Russian forces of atrocities, including a massacre in the city of Buka, outside Kyiv, airstrikes on hospitals and a missile attack that killed at least 57 people at a train station last week. were.
In Bucha, work resumed on Monday from a mass grave in a churchyard.
Ukrainian officials say Russian troops are confiscating the passports of Ukrainian citizens and then taking them to “filtration camps” in Ukraine’s separatist-controlled east, then sending them to economically depressed areas in Russia .
Boychenko said on Monday that improvised prisons were organized for those who did not pass the “filtering”, while at least 33,000 people were moved to separatist territory in Russia or Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Ukrainians on Monday that Russia could use chemical weapons in Mariupol.
“We take this as seriously as possible,” he said in his nightly address.
(with inputs from AP)