MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — The Mariupol city council has condemned the “inhuman cruelty” of a Russian airstrike on a theater in Mariupol earlier this month, adding that “there will never be forgiveness for those who brought devastation, pain and suffering to our home.”
However, a Mariupol news site published an interview Thursday with two eyewitnesses who survived the blast, including one who estimated that at least 300 people were killed. The Washington Post could not independently verify the figure.
Ukrainian news site “0629” quoted one eyewitness, identified only as Natalya, as saying: “I think that during the strike itself, about 100 people died — all those who were near the field kitchen and were waiting for their boiling water, volunteers. And the rest — in the right wing of the building — died under the rubble, because there was no one to pull them out. I think it’s about 200 more people, maybe more.”
Little independent reporting is available from the besieged city, where street fighting continues, making claims difficult to independently verify. Some previous death tolls reported by Ukrainian officials later turned out to be incorrect.
Ukraine’s stately Mariupol Drama Theater was reduced to rubble on March 16. Ukrainian officials say it was devastated by a Russian airstrike and that hundreds of civilians had been sheltering in a basement bunker. The Russian Defense Ministry denied involvement, saying its forces “did not carry out any tasks related to strikes against ground targets in the city of Mariupol.” It claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine’s far-right Azov Battalion, a paramilitary group, was responsible for the incident.
There have been conflicting reports about how many people were inside the theater when it was bombed.
An adviser to the Mariupol mayor’s office, Petro Andryushchenko, told The Post earlier this month that at least 130 people had been rescued from the bombed theater and that 800 to 1,000 people were believed to have been in the building at the time of the attack.
Human Rights Watch has said between 500 and 800 civilians were sheltering in the theater before it was bombed, citing interviews with residents fleeing Mariupol earlier this month.
Mariupol, a strategic southern port city on the Sea of Azov, has borne the brunt of the Russian offensive so far and faced intense attacks. It has been cut off from the outside world for weeks. Food, water and electricity shortages have been reported amid an almost total blackout of communications, making independent reporting extremely difficult.
The theater strike is one of several attacks in Mariupol on civilian targets. A maternity hospital was previously destroyed by Russian bombing.
Suliman reported from London. Annabelle Chapman in Paris contributed to this report.
