Ukraine war: 200 bodies found in basement in Mariupol’s ruins
- Decomposing bodies found in basement of apartment building in Russia-held Ukraine port city
- Russian forces have achieved ‘some localised successes’ despite strong Ukrainian resistance
Workers digging through the rubble of an apartment building in Mariupol found 200 bodies in the basement, Ukrainian authorities said, as more horrors come to light in the ruined city that has seen some of the worst suffering of the three-month-old war.
The bodies were decomposing and the stench hung over the neighbourhood, said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor. He did not say when they were discovered, but the sheer number of victims makes it one of the deadliest known attacks of the war.
Heavy fighting, meanwhile, was reported in the Donbas, the eastern industrial heartland that Moscow’s forces are intent on seizing. Russian troops took over an industrial town that hosts a thermal power station, and intensified efforts to encircle and capture Sievierodonetsk and other cities.
Twelve people were killed by Russian shelling in the Donetsk region of the Donbas, according to the regional governor. And the governor of the Luhansk region of the Donbas said the area is facing its “most difficult time” in the eight years since separatist fighting erupted there.
“The Russians are advancing in all directions at the same time. They brought over an insane number of fighters and equipment,” the governor, Serhii Haidai, wrote on Telegram. “The invaders are killing our cities, destroying everything around.” He added that Luhansk is becoming “like Mariupol”.
Mariupol was relentlessly pounded during a nearly three-month siege that ended last week after some 2,500 Ukrainian fighters abandoned a steel plant where they had made their stand. Russian forces already held the rest of the city, where an estimated 100,000 people remain out a pre-war population of 450,000, many of them trapped during the encirclement with little food, water, heat or electricity.