‘Women & children trapped under rubble’ after Russian forces ‘bomb Mariupol school’ where 400 were hiding
THE merciless war machine of Vladimir Putin plumbed sickening new depths yesterday by reducing a school to rubble.
Around 400 civilians were sheltering when the building was hit by thermobaric TOS-1A rockets, which can melt human organs.
Last night the number of casualties was still unclear but rescuers said people remained trapped.
The art school was the latest civilian target in the relentless bombardment of the strategically important port city of Mariupol.
Just last week a theatre there being used as a refuge by families was bombed — despite being clearly marked with the word “children” in large Russian writing visible from the air.
The search there for as many as 1,300 survivors goes on, while food and water supplies run desperately low, both inside and outside the stricken building.
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Another airstrike hit a maternity hospital in the city.
Yesterday President Volodymyr Zelensky said the port’s citizens were being massacred in what would go down in history as an unspeakable war crime.
He added: “To do this to a peaceful city is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come.”
Local authorities said the siege has killed at least 2,300 people, with some having to be buried in mass graves because constant shelling made funerals impossible.
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Russian forces have pushed deeper into the battered city, where heavy fighting shut down a major steel plant and locals pleaded for more Western help.
Speaking from all that remains of a once-busy street, Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said: “Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the Earth.”
Elsewhere across Ukraine there were reports Russian troops had shelled an old people’s home — killing 56 people in the smaller city of Kreminna, inside the breakaway pro-Russian region of Luhansk.
Some 15 survivors were then said to have been abducted by the troops and taken 25 miles north to nearby Svatove.
The shocking attack took place on March 11 but is being reported only now as Ukrainian authorities have been unable to reach the nursing home.
Meanwhile yesterday five people were injured when a Kremlin missile hit a block of flats next to a nursery and school in Sviatoshyn, near Kyiv.
Mr Zelensky said peace talks with Russia were needed — though they would be “not easy and pleasant”.
And he warned if they failed it could spark “World War Three”.
He said: “Ukraine has always sought a peaceful solution.
“Moreover, we are interested in peace now.”
Last night it was reported that Putin, reeling from the Ukrainian resistance, had “'finally agreed” to meet in person with Mr Zelensky.
So far the only negotiations have been between middle men on neutral ground.
With the war rumbling into its fourth week, Russia’s military was no longer even trying to recover the bodies of its soldiers, Mr Zelensky said.
He added: “In places where there were especially fierce battles, the bodies of Russian soldiers simply pile up along our line of defence.
“And no one is collecting these bodies.” He said Russia just kept “sending their people to slaughter” in a battle near Chornobayivka in the south.
There, Ukrainian forces have held their position and repelled the invaders six times.
Mariupol remains a top Putin target and would now mark a much-needed major battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely bogged down outside major cities.
Seizing it and other port cities would also help the despot gain control of the strategically important Black Sea coast.
He could then heap pressure on central Ukraine and advance forces northwards to Kyiv in three prongs.
It would also pave the way for a Russian corridor to the east in Donetsk and Luhansk, close to the Federation’s border.
These two regions were only recently recognised as independent states by Moscow.
Both are in Ukraine’s Donbas region and have witnessed a Russia-backed separatist movement since 2014, the year Putin’s forces annexed Crimea.
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Being able to use Crimea has been seen as a big tactical advantage for the Kremlin.
But thanks to staunch defence, the Russians are struggling to take full advantage.
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