KYIV: About 300 people were killed in the Russian airstrike last week that blasted open a Mariupol theater, Ukrainian authorities said in what would make it the war’s deadliest known attack on civilians yet.
In a vain attempt to protect the hundreds of people taking cover inside the theater, “CHILDREN” in Russian had been printed in huge white letters on the ground in two places outside the grand, columned building to make it visible from the air.
For days, the government in the besieged and ruined city of Mariupol was unable to give a casualty count for the March 16 attack. In announcing the death toll on its Telegram channel Friday, it cited eyewitnesses. But it was not immediately clear whether emergency workers had finished excavating the ruins of the Mariupol Drama Theater or how witnesses arrived at the figure.
Still, the emerging picture is certain to fuel allegations Moscow has committed war crimes by killing civilians, whether deliberately or by indiscriminate fire. And it could increase pressure on NATO to step up military aid. The alliance has refused so far to supply warplanes or establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine for fear of getting into a war with Russia.
Sullivan, said Friday the reaction to the theater bombing was “just absolute shock, particularly given the fact that it was so clearly a civilian target.” He said it showed “a brazen disregard for the lives of innocent people.”
Read more: Houthi rebels attack Saudi oil depot in Jeddah
The scale of devastation in Mariupol, where bodies have been left unburied amid bomb craters and hollowed-out buildings, has made information difficult to obtain.
But soon after the attack, the Ukrainian Parliament’s human rights commissioner said more than 1,300 people had taken shelter in the theater, many of them because their homes had been destroyed. The building had a basement bomb shelter, and some survivors did emerge from the rubble after the attack.
The reported death toll came a day after Biden and allied leaders promised that more military aid for Ukraine is on the way. But they stopped short of providing some of the heavy weaponry that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said is urgently needed. Zelenskky has pleaded for planes, tanks and no-fly patrols over Ukraine.
