A Russian military tank moves through a street on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, on Friday, March 11, 2022.
Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
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Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
A Russian military tank moves through a street on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, on Friday, March 11, 2022.
Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
LVIV, Ukraine – Russian forces hit the port city of Mariupol, shelling a mosque that shelters more than 80 people, including children, the Ukrainian government said on Saturday as fighting also broke out. broadcast on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv.
There was no immediate information on casualties from the shelling of the mosque. Mariupol has seen some of the greatest suffering from Russia’s war in Ukraine as convoys of barges repeatedly hampered ongoing efforts to bring in food and water and evacuate stranded civilians. stuck.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey said that a group of 86 Turkish citizens, including 34 children, were among those who sought safety in the mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife. Mr. Roksolana.
Elsewhere, air raid sirens blared across the capital and artillery barges sent residents scurrying for shelter. Fighting broke out in many areas around Kyiv.
Russia’s apparent, slow attempt to encircle the city and bombard other population centers with artillery and air strikes reflects the tactics Russian forces have previously employed in other, notable campaigns. attention is in Syria and Chechnya, to crush armed resistance.
Artillery hit the northwestern suburbs of Kyiv. To the southwest of the city, two columns of smoke – one black and one white – rose over the town of Vaslkyiv after an attack on an ammunition depot. The attack on the depot caused hundreds of small explosions from detonating the ammunition depot.
As of Friday, the death toll in Mariupol surpassed 1,500 in the 12 days of the attack, the mayor’s office said. A strike on a maternity hospital in the city of 446,000 this week that left three people dead has sparked international outrage and accusations of war crimes.
“The dead are not even buried,” the mayor said. An Associated Press photographer captured the moment a tank appeared to shoot directly at an apartment building, surrounded on one side by a billowing orange fireball.
