At least 5,000 people have been killed in Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine, since the start of the Russian invasion, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, in charge of humanitarian corridors, told AFP on Monday March 28.
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"
About 5,000 people were buried, but people have not been buried for ten days because of the continuous bombardments
," said Tetiana Lomakina, estimating that "
given the number of people still under the rubble (...), there could be around 10,000 dead
”.
The port city of Mariupol has been besieged by the Russian army since the end of February, forcing thousands of its inhabitants to live in very complicated conditions, without electricity or drinking water.
Of a peacetime population of 450,000, about 160,000 are still stuck there, according to its mayor, Vadim Boitchenko.
"
All entrances and exits from the city are blocked (...), it is impossible to bring food and medicine into Mariupol
," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lamented on Sunday evening.
“
Russian forces are bombing humanitarian aid convoys and killing the drivers
,” he added, indicating that the streets were strewn with “
corpses
” that it was impossible to bury.
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Counting of victims impossible
Nearly two weeks after the bombardment of its theater, the fate of the hundreds of civilians who had taken refuge there is still unknown: the municipality, citing witnesses, said it feared "
about 300 dead
".
But a municipal elected official who fled Mariupol on the day of the bombardment told AFP that any counting of the victims was impossible, given the faulty communications and the absence of local authorities.
French President Emmanuel Macron also announced on Sunday that he would speak to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday or Tuesday to organize a "
humanitarian operation
" to evacuate the city, with Turkey and Greece.
Mariupol is a strategic city on the Sea of Azov, coveted by the Russians so that its armed forces can make the connection between the Crimea annexed by Moscow in 2014 and the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donbass.
The previous assessment of the town hall in mid-March reported more than 2,000 civilians killed since the start of the Russian offensive on February 24.
