Ukrainian officials resumed efforts to evacuate more civilians trapped in Mariupol on Friday, as the United Nations’ human rights team reported growing evidence of mass graves in the besieged city.
Thousands remained trapped in the southern port city with little food, water or power, and repeated attempts to arrange safe passage out of Mariupol, which is surrounded by Russian forces, have failed.
“We have got increasing information on mass graves that are there,” the UN’s Matilda Bogner told journalists by video link from Ukraine, saying some of the evidence came from satellite images. At least one mass grave appeared to hold 200 bodies.
The UN human rights office, which has about 50 staff remaining in Ukraine, has so far counted 1,081 civilian deaths in the war. But verification difficulties meant that toll included “very few” from Mariupol, Bogner said.
“The extent of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian objects strongly suggests that the principles of distinction, of proportionality, the rule on feasible precautions and the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks have been violated,” she said.
Bogner’s team is investigating alleged human rights violations, including reports Russian forces had shot and killed civilians in their cars as they were fleeing, the disappearances of Ukrainian officials and journalists, and the forced movement of civilians into Russian-held territory.
On Thursday, Mariupol officials claimed about 15,000 civilians had been illegally deported to Russia since the war began on Feb. 24.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said she hoped Mariupol residents would be able to leave in private cars on Friday.
Those who manage to flee would find buses awaiting in the nearby city of Berdyansk that would take them to the city of Zaporizhzhia, Vereshchuk said.
“We will do everything in our power so that buses filled with Mariupol residents reach Zaporizhzhia today,” she said Friday.
Mariupol, which was home to about 400,000 people before the war, has seen heavy Russian bombardment since President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into the country one month ago.
Roughly 65,000 people had so far fled the city in private vehicles or on foot, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on national television Friday. Mariupol remains under Ukraine’s control, he added.
The city made international headlines on March 16 when a drama theatre sheltering thousands of residents in its basement was bombed. Satellite photos taken before the attack showed an enormous inscription reading “children” in Russian posted outside the building.
Local officials, citing witness accounts, said on Friday as many as 300 people may have been killed in the strike. It was not immediately clear whether emergency workers had finished excavating the theatre ruins, or how witnesses arrived at those figures.
The city council made clear it was still not possible to determine the exact death toll, and the Ukrainian government has said it’s almost impossible to tell how many have been killed because Mariupol is in chaos and under almost constant bombardment.
Petro Andrushenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, later gave the same estimate in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
Officials had used data on the average number of people who stayed in the theatre each day, how many of those had left to be evacuated, and how many had moved to the theatre from other shelters, he said.
They also spoke with Mariupol residents who lived near the theatre, people who were there immediately after the bombing or the next day, and others who escaped the attack.
Using that data, authorities calculated there were about 900 people in the basement shelter just before the bombing, Andrushenko said.
“The bombing killed about 300 people on the upper floors and in the back of the theatre,” he said, adding that about 600 people were rescued. “It feels like that damn bomb exploded right in my heart, leaving nothing.”
Russia has denied bombing the theatre. The Kremlin claims Russian forces have not targeted civilians in the war.
Putin’s war on Ukraine has stalled on most fronts. Russia has failed to capture a single major Ukrainian city, seize the capital Kyiv or swiftly topple President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government.
Russia calls the war, which is the biggest attack on a European state since the Second World War, a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from “Nazis.”
The West describes it as a false pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression to subdue a country Putin describes as illegitimate.
Peace talks have been ongoing throughout the war, but have yet to produce any breakthroughs.
— with files from Reuters.