A NUMBER of women and children have been reportedly trapped under the rubble after Putin’s forces bombed a school in Mariupol.
The Mariupol City Council said 400 civilians were hiding at the art school in the besieged city.
Mariupol has been under fire for over two weeks[/caption]
Entire neighbourhoods have been destroyed[/caption]
Ukrainian authorities said the building was completely destroyed and people could be trapped inside.
It currently remains unknown if there are any casualties.
To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation.
It comes days after Putin’s troops bombed a theatre in Mariupol said to be sheltering 1,200 people.
Satellite images showed the word “children” written in large white letters in Russian outside the front and back of the building, the Maxar space technology company said.
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In a statement, Ukraine‘s foreign ministry said: “The theatre building served as shelter for hundreds of Mariupol residents who had lost their homes as a result of Russian armed forces bombing and shelling the city.
“The bomb strike demolished the central part of the theatre building, causing large numbers of people to be buried under the debris.
“The assessment of the exact number of persons affected is currently impossible due to ongoing shelling.
“By delivering a purposeful bomb attack to the place of mass gathering of civilians Russia has committed another war crime.
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“Putin’s regime has long since crossed the line of humanity.”
Pictures showed a pile of rubble with twisted metal and smoke rising from the ruins while videos showed blood-soaked victims being rushed to hospital – and numerous bodies in the basement of the theatre.
The Mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, said that efforts to rescue hundreds of people trapped in the basement of a bombed theatre in the city have been hampered.
About 300,000 people are trapped inside, as food, water and medical supplies run out and Russia blocks the entry of humanitarian aid.
“[There is] street fighting in the city centre,” Mr Boychenko said, confirming a claim made by Russia on Friday, when it said it was “tightening the noose” around the city.
“There are tanks… and artillery shelling, and all kinds of weapons fired in the area,” the mayor said.
“Our forces are doing everything they can to hold their positions in the city but the forces of the enemy are larger than ours, unfortunately.”
Earlier this week, footage showed Putin’s kill squad opening fire on a high-rise building in the city.
The clip, said to have been released by pro-Putin Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, begins by showing the fighters gathered in a Mariupol alleyway against a backdrop of patriotic music.
It goes on to show the hitmen pounding a building in the bombed-out city from behind a tank, before bizarrely cutting to soldiers appearing to rescue women and children.
Mariupol has been under fire for more than two weeks and entire neighbourhoods have been turned into wasteland.
The fighting continues with 80 percent of the city’s residential buildings being damaged.
Meanwhile, nineteen children, most of them orphans, have been struck in a clinic in the city for weeks living in harrowing conditions.
A witness who managed to get out said the children, aged four-17 were in “huge danger”.
Speaking from the central city of Zaporizhzhia where he was evacuated on Friday, he said the children were living in freezing cellars and had not washed for more than two weeks.
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“There is no heating, it is cold. One of the girls, around eight-years-old, showed me a wound on her face, she said it was from the cold,” he said.
The children were being looked after by a “hero” pulmonologist, a cook and two nurses, he added.
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