A theater housing “hundreds of civilians” was heavily damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, the town hall of this besieged city in southeastern Ukraine announced on Wednesday.
“The plane dropped a bomb on the building where hundreds of civilians were sheltering. It is impossible to establish the toll immediately, because the bombing of residential areas continues, ”wrote the town hall on Telegram, posting a photo of the theater, the central part of which is destroyed.
“The entrance to the shelter is blocked with debris. The information on the victims is being verified”, according to the same source.
The Russian Ministry of Defense for its part denied having bombed the theater by blaming the explosion on the account of the Ukrainian nationalist Azov battalion. Moscow has already implicated this military unit in the bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital last week, which sparked an international outcry.
More than 2,000 civilians died in Mariupol, which has been besieged and shelled for several days, local authorities say.
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