Satellite images taken Saturday show extensive damage to the port city of Mariupol in Ukraine after Russia pounded it with strikes.
The satellite images released by U.S. company Maxar show fire in parts of Mariupol and extensive damage to apartments, homes and other infrastructure.
In the industrial district of Primorskyi, buildings can be seen engulfed in flames.
Mariupol is currently under siege by Russian forces, who are thwarting attempts to bring in food, water and medicine. It has endured some of the worst impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including unceasing barrages and a 13-day blockade.
The city’s electricity, gas and water supplies are currently knocked out, and aid group Doctors Without Borders says residents are dying from a lack of medication. Officials say a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding.
So far, more than 1,500 people have died in the city of 430,000, according to the mayor’s office. Global News could not independently verify the casualty number.
Maxar said fires were seen in the western section of Mariupol. The image below shows black smoke from apartment buildings covering a sports field visible in a satellite image taken in June 2021, before Russia’s invasion.
Russian forces have captured the eastern outskirts of Mariupol. If the city falls, the strategic port could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine has not spared residential buildings. In the image below, dozens of high-rise apartment buildings can be seen severely damaged in the Zhovteneyvi district, with trees that had previously lined the complex now gone, as seen in June 2021.
Russia’s strikes have blackened land across Ukraine. Craters can be seen in a field in Mariupol’s western district of Zhovteneyvi.
“They are bombing (Mariupol) 24 hours a day, launching missiles. It is hatred. They kill children,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a video address Saturday.
Russia’s attack has also included hospitals. The World Health Organization says at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities have been hit, and Zelenskyy said three people, including a child, were killed during a hospital bombing in Mariupol on Wednesday.
A group of hospital workers in Mariupol were under sniper fire Friday, according to an Associated Press journalist with the group. One worker shot in the hip has survived.
Conditions at the hospital were deteriorating, with electricity reserved for operating tables and people lining the hallways with nowhere to go.
Maxar’s image below shows one hospital in Mariupol that has been under attack.
— with files from Reuters and The Associated Press
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