A building of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was Russian bombing target in Mariupola besieged strategic port city in southeastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian official said on Wednesday.
“The occupants deliberately bombed an ICRC building in Mariupol,” Liudmila Denisova, head of human rights in the Ukrainian Parliament, wrote on Telegram.
“At the moment, we have no information on casualties,” he added, without specifying how many people might have been in the building at the time of the bombing.
The Russian forces continue siege of Mariupol with constant and indiscriminate bombardments that have left the less than 5,000 people dead according to the authorities, who estimate that the total number of dead could rise to 10,000.
Aid organizations have repeatedly asked for access to Mariupol, where living conditions are very difficult and Ukrainian officials accuse Russian troops of forcibly deporting residents to Russia.
A city under constant siege and on the edge
Satellite images released in recent hours show the level of destruction that the port city has suffered. In the photos you can see entire residential areas reduced to rubble as well as the presence of Russian artillery posts on the borders of the city.
Despite the Russian announcement that they were going to reduce their military activity, the siege on Mariupol has remained intact. According to numerous analysts, the city could be close to falling completely into Russian hands.
In a telephone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin said that the siege of Mariupol was only will stop when ukrainian troops surrender.
The French government called the situation in Mariupol “catastrophic”, claiming that “the civilian population must be protected, and allowed to leave the city if they so wish.”
Ukraine has accused Moscow of force thousands of people to leave Mariupol and locate them in areas under Russian control. Some Ukrainian officials have said Russia’s actions amount to “deportations” to “filtration camps,” a vast military camp where soldiers call people in one by one.
According to a woman who recounted her experience to the newspaper The Washington Post, each displaced person who was taken to one of these camps was photographed and fingerprinted. Then they were asked to hand over their cell phone and password to another officer, who dumped the information on a spreadsheet. From there, it went to the interrogation phase.
The terminology reminiscent of Russian actions in Chechnya, where thousands of Chechens were interrogated and tortured in such camps and many disappeared.
Matilda Bogner, the head of the UN Human Rights Mission in Ukraine, stated that there could be thousands of civilians killed in the port city.