City is no more, ‘just hell’

MARIUPOL: FRANTIC EFFORTS TO UNLOCK BUNKER OF SHELLED THEATRE

Up to 1 000 seeking shelter buried, ‘but some survived’.

Rescue workers searched desperately for any survivors buried beneath the rubble of Mariupol’s bombedout theatre yesterday, as Russia’s forces pounded residential areas across Ukraine, stoking allegations of war crimes.

A day after Mariupol’s once-gleaming whitewashed theatre was hollowed out by a Russian strike, the number of dead, injured or trapped is still unclear.

Ukraine’s ombud Lyudmyla Denisova said a bomb shelter in the building had survived the impact and some “adults and children” had emerged alive.

“Work is underway to unlock the basement,” she said, amid fears that up to 1 000 people may have been taking refuge underground at the time of the blast.

The attack on a civilian building marked with the words “DETI”, or “children” in Russian, has sparked a wave of international revulsion and heaped pressure on Russia’s few remaining allies – most notably China – to condemn Moscow’s apparent deliberate targeting of civilians.

In a call later yesterday, US President Joe Biden warned his counterpart Xi Jinping that Beijing will face “costs” for “any actions it takes to support Russia’s aggression”, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In the wake of the theatre attack, Blinken also said it was “difficult to conclude” that Vladimir Putin’s regime had not engaged in war crimes by targeting civilians.

Biden hoped China would use “whatever leverage they have to compel Moscow to end this war”, the top US diplomat said.

Russia has routinely denied such allegations and the ministry of defence has said it did not strike any ground targets in Mariupol on the afternoon the theatre was hit.

It, instead, claimed Ukraine’s hardline nationalist Azov battalion, a frequent target of Russian propaganda, mined the theatre and held civilian hostages there in “a new bloody provocation”.

Local officials say more than 2 000 people have died so far in indiscriminate shelling and 80% of its housing has been destroyed.

“In the streets, there are the bodies of many dead civilians,” Tamara Kavunenko, 58, who fled the city, said.

“It’s not Mariupol anymore,” she said. “It is hell.”

Picture: AFP MY SON. Mother of major Ivan Skrypnyk, who was killed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, mourns over his coffin at Lychakiv cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.