蜜芽传媒

While 140,000 civilians have managed to escape from besieged Mariupol, another 160,000 are still trapped there, the city council said on Monday. Relentless Russian shelling for more than three weeks has reduced the city to ruins, its terrified civilians hiding in cellars, desperately short of water, food and medicine.

Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the Mariupol's mayor, has put the number of civilian deaths at 5,000. He says they are desperate the evacuate the remaining inhabitants from Mariupol, but evacuation efforts have repeatedly stalled. He believes that as many as 30,000 civlians have been forcibly evactuated by Russian forces, to Russia and the Donbas region, including children separated from their parents. He also says there are reports that the International Red Cross are setting up a camp in Rostov, in Russia, but he says he is not clear who the camp is intended for or if their actions could be enabling more forced evacuations from Ukraine.

Photo: Residents of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol stay at a temporary accommodation centre in Taganrog in the Rostov region, Russia Credit: Reuters