Up to 1,300 Ukrainian civilians are reportedly trapped under the debris from a theater that had been targeted in a Russian airstrike.
“Russian missiles continued to devastate major cities across Ukraine on Friday — as rescuers desperately tried to reach as many as 1,300 people feared trapped for two days below the rubble of a blown-up theater in the hardest-hit city of Mariupol,” The New York Post reported. “The early-morning barrages included strikes on the capital, Kyiv, where at least one person was killed and nearly 100 others forced to flee when six houses and two schools were hit in the central Podil neighborhood, on the banks of the Dnieper River.”
The Russian airstrike hit the theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Thursday as civilians used it for shelter from Russian attacks.
“Rescue workers searched for survivors Thursday in the ruins of a theater blown apart by a Russian airstrike in the besieged city of Mariupol, while scores of Ukrainians across the country were killed in ferocious urban attacks on a school, a hostel and other sites,” The Associated Press reported. “Hundreds of civilians had been taking shelter in the grand, columned theater in central Mariupol after their homes were destroyed in three weeks of fighting in the southern port city of 430,000.”
The Russian airstrike follows a pattern of Russian attacks on civilians. Earlier this week, Russian forces occupied an intensive care hospital in Mariupol and held patients and staff hostage, according to the Media Initiative for Human Rights in Ukraine.
“Hospital staff and patients are held hostage,” the media hotline said.
“Russian forces are apparently firing at the windows of the hospital in an effort to trigger a response from Ukrainian soldiers,” Fox News reported. “Russian troops have threatened to shoot at those trying to escape.”
According to a Facebook translation, the Media Initiative said, “The Media Initiative for Human Rights calls on the international community to take all possible measures to stop the Russian Federation war crime, which is happening just at this moment, and to release doctors, patients, civilians” whom Russian forces are holding hostage as a “living shield.”
