Russia ‘bombs mosque with more than 30 children sheltering inside’

Russian forces have shelled a mosque sheltering more than 80 people in the besieged city of Mariupol, the Ukrainian government has claimed.

Mariupol has seen some of the greatest misery from Vladimir Putin’s war as unceasing barrages have thwarted repeated attempts to bring in food and water and to evacuate trapped civilians.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey said that a group of 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children, were among the people who had sought safety in the mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roksolana.

The foreign ministry said the place of worship ‘was shelled by Russian invaders’. There has yet to be any reports of casualties.

As of Friday, the death toll in Mariupol passed 1,500 during 12 days of attack, the mayor’s office said.

A strike on a maternity hospital this week killed three people, sparking international outrage and allegations of war crimes.

The ceaseless shelling forced volunteers to stop digging trenches for mass graves, meaning the ‘dead aren’t even being buried’, the mayor said.

Russian forces have hit more than a dozen hospitals since they invaded Ukraine on February 24, according to the World Health Organisation.

Ukrainian officials reported on Saturday that heavy artillery had damaged a cancer hospital and several residential buildings in Mykolaiv, a city 300 miles west of Mariupol.

The hospital’s head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko, said several hundred patients were in the facility during the attack but no one was killed.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky also accused Russia of kidnapping the mayor of Melitopol, a southern port city.

The conflict has already sent 2.5 million people fleeing the country.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed along with many Ukrainian civilians.

On the ground, the Kremlin’s forces appeared to be trying to regroup and regain momentum after encountering tough resistance and amassing heavy losses over the past two weeks.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russia is trying to reset and ‘re-posture’ its troops, gearing up for operations against Kyiv.

‘It’s ugly already, but it’s going to get worse,’ said Nick Reynolds, a warfare analyst at Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

Russian forces were blockading Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, even as efforts have been made to create new humanitarian corridors around it and other urban centers so aid can get in and residents can get out.

Ukraine’s emergency services reported Saturday that the bodies of five people – two women, a man and two children – were pulled from an apartment building that was struck by shelling in Kharkiv.

Next Story :

Now you can get latest stories from Indtoday on Telegram everyday. Click the link to subscribe.  Click to follow Indtoday Facebook page and Twitter and on Instagram. For all the latest Hyderabad News updates