Kyiv: Aid convoy arrested
Mariupol reports extremely powerful bombs falling
03/23/2022, 00:14
Refugees describe the largely destroyed port city as “an ice-cold hell landscape”. More than 200,000 people are said to be stuck there – without food, heating and electricity. According to the city administration, just as civilians are about to leave Mariupol, there are particularly destructive airstrikes.
Amidst desperate efforts to evacuate the civilian population, two “extremely powerful bombs” fell in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which was besieged by Russian troops, according to the authorities. “It is clear that the besiegers are not interested in the city, they want to wipe it out, reduce it to ashes,” the city administration said. The two particularly powerful bombs hit just as civilians were about to be evacuated.
According to the authorities, more than 200,000 people are trapped in Mariupol. The situation is dramatic after weeks of Russian shelling and siege. According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, residents who managed to escape reported an “icy-cold hellscape full of corpses and destroyed buildings”. Thousands of people persevered in subterranean spaces – without water, food, electricity and communication options.
According to the deputy mayor of the port city, quoted by Human Rights Watch, more than 3,000 civilians have died in Mariupol. The city is strategically extremely important – and accordingly contested.
Government: Convoy stopped, hostages taken
According to Ukrainian sources, pro-Russian separatists arrested an aid convoy not far from the port city. Fighters from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic have taken several Ukrainian civil defense workers “hostage” in Manhush, ten kilometers west of Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereschuk said on Ukrainian television. The information could not initially be independently verified. The arrested people drove buses in which civilians were to be evacuated from Mariupol, Vereshchuk said. The escape route had been agreed with the International Red Cross.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said more than 68,000 other civilians had been brought to safety from Mariupol without Kiev’s help. These people are now “in complete safety under the protection of the Russian Federation.” Kyiv, on the other hand, accuses Moscow of bringing women and children in particular to Russia against their will.