THE DEPUTY MAYOR of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol has said that “hundreds” will die if a humanitarian convoy carrying food and water does not reach the city in the next few days.
Sergei Orlov said that the lack of food, water and aid in the city means the situation “is getting worse and worse”.
The Azov Sea port city of around half a million has been under siege since early this month and is facing what Ukraine and aid agencies call a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
Heavy bombardment has left some 400,000 inhabitants with no running water or heating and food running short.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Orlov said: “I think I cannot find necessary words to describe all the awful situation.”
“A lot of our people, they suffer because of lack of water and food… I think that if the humanitarian convoy will not reach the city or in some other case to provide food in the next day people will die – hundreds – because of lack of water and food,” he said.
He claimed some civilians had been killed while trying to prepare food in their gardens.
“People do not have access to electricity, water, heat and so on so they prepare some food on fire and they were killed by Russian artillery while preparing cooking in their own in their garden. So it’s crazy and awful situation.”
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) have been trying for days to deliver aid to Mariupol.
A spokesperson for the ICRC told The Journal that they are still not able to get aid into city, adding that the situation remains “dire and desperate”.
“We urgently need an agreement between the parties to bring aid in and to ensure the safe passage out for those wishing to leave. The human suffering is simply immense, and we are really in a race against time to save lives,” he said.
Buildings are struck and shrapnel flies everywhere. This is the situation every person in the city faces. Hundreds of thousands of people in the city are now facing extreme and total shortages of basic necessities like food, water and medicine. People of all ages, including our staff, are sheltering in unheated basements, risking their lives to make short runs outside for food and water. Life-changing injuries and chronic, debilitating conditions cannot be treated. It’s a horrendous situation.
Orlov called on the international community to help to ensure that humanitarian aid reached the city.
“We need strong support to set up these humanitarian corridors this day, or maximum the day after tomorrow, to enable people to receive water and food. It’s absolutely necessary,” he said.
Evacuations
Orlov said efforts to evacuate residents through humanitarian corridors are continuing today. As of 2pm today, 2,000 civilian cars have been able to drive out of the city along one of the humanitarian evacuation routes.
The city council said another 2,000 cars were waiting to leave along the evacuation route, which runs west for more than 160 miles (257 km) to the Ukraine-held city of Zaporizhzhia.
City officials advised drivers to spend the night along the route unless they were close to Zaporizhzhia by evening.
Another 160 cars had left the city on Monday, the council has said.
Orlov said the city is under “continuous shelling and under continuous bombing and we have some street battles in some streets”.
“We had an awful day with a lot of bombing and a lot of airstrikes with more than 100 bombs. We should understand that each bomb, it destroys several buildings,” he said.
He said that 2,580 people had been killed in the city so far, and that continuous fighting has made it is difficult for the collection of dead bodies for burial.
We continue to bury them. Some of them in mass graves, some of them, people bury them in their gardens and parks. It is not possible for people to leave the city to bury people outside the city, so they look for any possibility to bury people in our city.
“We try to collect as much as possible but I know that in some places, it takes one day, two days or three to collect bodies,” he said.
He claimed that Russian troops are continuing to commit war crimes and are destroying buildings housing kindergartens, schools and hospitals.
Yesterday, medics confirmed that a pregnant woman and her baby had died after Russian forces bombed the maternity hospital in Mariupol where she was meant to give birth.
The airstrike on the maternity and children’s hospital prompted international condemnation, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling it an “atrocity”.
After being accused of war crimes, Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside.
Images of the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomising the horror of the attack.
The woman was rushed to another hospital, closer to the frontline, where doctors worked to keep her alive.
Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman’s pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via caesarean section, but it showed “no signs of life”, the surgeon said. They then began work on the mother.
“More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn’t produce results,” Marin said on Saturday. “Both died.”
‘Unconscionable cruelty’
In a joint statement on Sunday, UN agencies called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to attacks on healthcare professionals and facilities in Ukraine, describing them as acts of “unconscionable cruelty”.
Since the start of the invasion, 31 attacks on health care have been documented via the WHO’s Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA), the statement said.
It was signed by the heads of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Population Fund and the World Health Organization.
“To attack the most vulnerable – babies, children, pregnant women, and those already suffering from illness and disease, and health workers risking their own lives to save lives – is an act of unconscionable cruelty,” they said.
In 24 of the reported attacks, health care facilities were damaged or destroyed, while in five cases ambulances were hit, they added. A total of 12 people were killed and 34 injured.
Aid and health care workers had to be able to work in safety, “including immunisation against Covid-19 and polio, and the supply of life-saving medicines for civilians across Ukraine as well as to refugees crossing into neighbouring countries,” they said.
“We have already seen that the health care needs of pregnant women, new mothers, younger children and older people inside Ukraine are rising, while access to services is being severely limited by the violence.
“For example, more than 4,300 births have occurred in Ukraine since the start of the war and 80,000 Ukrainian women are expected to give birth in the next three months. Oxygen and medical supplies, including for the management of pregnancy complications, are running dangerously low.”
It was signed by UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, UNFPA counterpart Natalia Kanem and WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
With reporting from © AFP 2022
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