400 “hostages” in a hospital and hundreds of people hiding starving: the desperate situation in the besieged city of Mariupol

Hundreds of people remain crammed into the basement of a public building in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol. Ukraine.

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They are running out of food and many also need urgent medical help.

“Some developed sepsis from the shrapnel in their bodiessaid Anastasiya Ponomareva, a 39-year-old teacher who fled the city at the start of the war but is still in contact with friends there. “The situation is very serious.”

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Mariupol is surrounded by Russian troops and is constantly bombarded.

Almost 400,000 people they are stuck in different parts of the city without running water, and food and medical supplies are running out fast.

Image of a street in Mariupol before and after the Russian attacks

Local authorities claimed that the Russian attacks have left at least 2,400 civilians killedbut even they acknowledge that this is an underestimate.

Ponomareva’s friends are with other families in the basement of the building. They have all left houses that are no longer safe or are no longer standing.

“People who managed to hide in underground shelters basically live there permanently,” Ponomareva said from the western Ukrainian city of Drohobych.

“They can not go out”.

Shopping center in Mariupol before and after the Russian attacks

Deterioration

Most of the day people spend hiding in the basement. From time to time they go upstairs to catch a glimpse of natural light, but they rarely venture outside the building.

Conditions, according to accounts received by Ponomareva, are rapidly deteriorating, as some people have a fever and nothing can be done to treat it. “There is no medical help, no antibiotics.”

Some streets are so dangerous that few go out to collect the dead. Many are being buried in mass graves.

Almost non-stop Russian attacks have turned the city’s neighborhoods into a wasteland of rubble. New drone footage (as seen in the photos in this story) shows the extensive extent of the damage, with fire and smoke billowing from dilapidated apartment blocks and blackened streets.

“On the west side of the river there are no intact residential buildings, everything is burned to the groundPonomareva said. “The city center is unrecognizable.”

A family of four, sheltering in the same building, has contacted Serhii Kozyrkov, a 40-year-old pastor who left Mariupol two weeks ago.

“The basement is full of people and there is not enough food,” said Kozyrkov, who is now in Lviv. “People get sick because it’s so cold there and everyone is lying next to each other“.

The family is desperate to flee. On Tuesday, some 2,000 cars managed to leave Mariupol, according to the city council, and 2,000 more were ready to go. It was the second day that people were allowed to leave the city at times.

On March 15, some people were evacuated in buses and other vehicles. (Photo: EPA)

Previous evacuation attempts had failed, with Ukrainian authorities accusing Russia of attacking the city and even routes used by civilians, despite an agreed ceasefire to allow their escape.

Russian troops also did not allow humanitarian aid to enter the city.. Sergei Orlov, deputy mayor of Mariupol, said things “are getting more difficult by the hour.”

“The situation is horrible,” he said. “There is not enough food, water, medicine, insulin, baby food. They all have specific needs.”

According to Orlov, vehicles with humanitarian aid have been waiting to enter the city for four days, but Russian troops have not allowed them to enter.

“We get a lot of calls. For example, a mother who said ‘I have a child in my hands starving‘. In another call they told us: ‘Here is our address. We are locked in the basement. What should we do?'” Orlov said.

“Unfortunately,” he added, “we can’t do anything.”

This image shows the remains of a house in Mariupol that was destroyed by a Russian shell, according to the Ukrainian military. (Photo: Reuters)

At the hospital

Orlov also told the BBC that Russian forces entered the largest hospital in Mariupol and are preventing doctors and patients from leaving the building.

Some 400 people at the Regional Intensive Care Hospital were taken “hostages,” the deputy mayor said.

“We received information that the Russian army captured our largest hospital,” he added.

In a Facebook post, Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kirilenko said a hospital worker managed to alert authorities to the situation.

The hospital, he said, was the same one that was damaged in a Russian attack last week.

Map of key localities in Mariupol

Back in the underground shelter housing hundreds of people in Mariupol, the family who contacted Kozyrkov told him they heard the sound of explosions nearby, though the building remained intact.

There is a generator that the people in the basement use to recharge their phones. and, from time to time, they venture outside to make some calls.

“The shelling does not stop,” Kozyrkov said. “They are very scared.”

Ponomareva said that people need a humanitarian corridor.

“Otherwise they will die a slow death from hunger and thirst.”

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Source: Elcomercio