Mariupol: Ukraine officials accuse Russia of school shelter airstrike and forced deportations
Authorities in the besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol made further claims of Russian atrocities on Sunday, as fighting reportedly continued inside the city where thousands of people remain trapped.
The finger has been pointed at Moscow for an alleged airstrike which flattened an art school where hundreds of civilians were said to be sheltering, and for thousands of alleged forced deportations to Russia.
Local authorities said the art school’s building was destroyed and people could remain under the rubble.
"Yesterday (Saturday), the Russian occupiers dropped bombs on the G12 art school located on the left bank of Mariupol, where 400 Mariupol residents -- women, children and the elderly -- had refugees," the local authority said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Access to Mariupol is impossible: the attack has not been confirmed and there was no immediate word on casualties.
The alleged bombing follows other attacks on prominent civilian buildings.
Last Wednesday Russian forces bombed a theatre in the city where people were sheltering. City authorities said 130 people were rescued but many more could remain under the debris.
The previous week a strike on a maternity hospital left three people dead including a child, the authorities said.
The city council in Mariupol made another claim on Sunday — alleging that Russian soldiers have forcibly relocated several thousand city residents, mostly women and children, to Russia.
The governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kirilenko, also accused Moscow of having "forcibly deported more than 1,000 inhabitants of Mariupol" living in the east of the city to Russia, without specifying when the alleged relocations took place.
Kirilenko said Russian forces have set up "filtration camps"
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