Ukraine accuses the invading troops of killing a dozen citizens who were waiting to buy bread and of taking hostages in a hospital
The third week of the war began this Wednesday with the usual sound of anti-aircraft sirens sounding in large cities, the novelty of the attack from the sea on the coast of Odessa and the bombing of a Mariupol theater that is usually used as a refuge. “The plane dropped a bomb on the building that housed hundreds of civilians. It is impossible to establish an immediate balance, because the bombings in that residential area continue,” the mayor’s office said on Telegram.
The Russian Defense Ministry was quick to deny the action and attributed the explosion to the Azov battalion. Moscow had already accused that Ukrainian military unit of the bombing last week of a Mariupol pediatric and maternity hospital. Be that as it may, the city, which had 400,000 inhabitants before the invasion, is one of the hardest hit since the start of the attacks. Their residential buildings have been razed to the ground and the population that is still inside endures dramatic humanitarian conditions, as reported by Doctors Without Borders or Save the Children.
There late on Tuesday, Russian forces would have entered a hospital and would have taken 400 hostages, according to Sergei Orlov, deputy mayor. In a post on Facebook, the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kirilenko, reported that a health center worker managed to alert the authorities about the situation. Throughout the day the detainees were able to leave the center. In addition, the invading soldiers also fired artillery fire at a convoy of civilians fleeing towards Zaporizhia, injuring at least five people, including a child.
During the night of Wednesday, kyiv reported that a fleet of at least fourteen Russian ships launched “rockets and artillery” against the coast of Odessa. Taking what is known as the pearl of the Black Sea would leave the country presided over by Volodímir Zelenski without a maritime outlet. “They fired a large amount of ammunition from a long distance. They wanted to test the coastal defense system. They did not achieve any results, ”said the same sources.
By land, the military sent by the Kremlin continued to be unable to break Mikolaiv, the city whose fall would clear their path to Odessa but which is resisting intense bombing and shooting. Several Western media visited one of its morgues and confirmed that the high number of deaths makes it necessary to leave the corpses in the open air, in the snow. Wrapped in plastic bags, they wait to be taken to a burial place. “I never saw anything like it. We thought that the worst thing that could happen to us here was car accidents. Since the beginning of the war, we have received 120 bodies, including 80 soldiers and 30 civilians, ”the workers of the overflowing facility explained to the AFP agency.
Although Russia assures that it only acts on military objectives, Wednesday’s day again left complaints of attacks on civilians. One of the most dramatic would have taken place in Chernihiv. There, according to the Ukrainian authorities, the invading troops would have fired indiscriminately at “a group of people queuing to buy bread. There are at least ten dead.
sending help
Health centers have become one of the targets in the Russian advance. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it has verified 43 attacks against the Ukrainian health system, where 900 facilities located in very high-risk areas have been identified. According to the director of Emergencies, Mike Ryan, the international organization is doing everything possible to deploy medical teams on the ground to support the efforts of local services, but the attacks that are being registered against the facilities threaten this plan.
“How are we going to send medical teams if the places they have to go are going to be bombed? This crisis is reaching a point where healthcare in Ukraine, which is doing amazingly well, needs to be backed up and given basic life-saving tools,” he noted. The WHO has sent Ukraine 100 tons of supplies such as oxygen, insulin, surgical instruments, anesthesia and blood transfusion packages, and is preparing another shipment with oxygen generators, electric generators and defibrillators.
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