300 Feared Dead in Russian Airstrike on Theatre in Ukraine’s Mariupol Last Week: City Officials

President Volodymyr Zelensky said following the strike that hundreds of people, believed mostly to be women and children, were inside the building at the time of the attack.

Kyiv/New Delhi: As many as 300 people died in a Russian airstrike last week on a theatre where hundreds were sheltering in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, reported international news agencies quoting the city’s government on Friday. “From eyewitnesses, information is emerging that about 300 people died in the Drama Theatre of Mariupol following strikes by a Russian aircraft,” Mariupol city hall wrote on social media platform – Telegram.

It was not immediately clear whether emergency workers had finished excavating the site or as to how the eyewitnesses arrived at the horrific death toll. President Volodymyr Zelensky said following the strike that hundreds of people, believed mostly to be women and children, were inside the building at the time of the attack.

𝟏/𝟒 𝐌𝐲 𝐀𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐧 #𝐑𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐔𝐤𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐖𝐚𝐫

1. #Russia will wait to achieve main objectives like #Kyiv, #Kharkhiv, #Odessa & Control over the coastline
2. Thereafter, It wil declare/accept #Ceasefire & initiate talks with #Ukraine#UkraineCrisis

— Major Amit Bansal (Veteran) (@majoramitbansal) March 4, 2022

Mariupol city hall on Friday said the theatre was destroyed in a “cynical” attack and claimed that Russia knew civilians were taking refuge in the building. When the theatre was struck on March 16, an enormous inscription reading CHILDREN was posted outside in Russian, intended to be visible from the skies above.

Soon after the airstrike, Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament’s human rights commissioner, had said that more than 1,300 people had been sheltering in the ravaged building. Mariupol has been the scene of some of the worst devastation of the war, which has seen Russia relentlessly besiege and pummel Ukraine’s cities.

(With inputs from AP, Reuters))