Horror of Mariupol as city is 90% destroyed and population starves – World News

Ukraine’s theater of horror as officials in the city of Mariupol compile the grim death toll and Russian television issues nuclear war threats amid further warnings of a possible chemical weapons attack

The number of civilians killed in a Russian airstrike on a theater in Ukraine is said to have reached at least 300.

Council officials in the port city of Mariupol used eyewitness accounts after the March 16 bombings to piece together the murky toll.

The announcement came as Russian state television issued nuclear war threats amid further warnings that Moscow is preparing for a possible chemical weapons attack.

100,000 people are still trapped in Mariupol, 90% destroyed after being pulverized by air and artillery attacks and now surrounded by Russian forces.

The council added that in the city, which had been cut off from water and electricity for weeks, there had been “increasing numbers of starvation deaths”.

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There was no news of another 600 people believed to be in the rubble of the Drama Theater or 400 in a bombed maternity hospital.

Ukraine yesterday said Russia’s troop losses had reached around 16,000 by the 30th day of the war.

A western official said 20 of the 115 to 120 battalions that Russia started with are no longer “combat effective”.

Moscow is said to have lost 115 fighter jets, 125 helicopters, 561 tanks and five warships.

A Russian colonel was deliberately mowed down and killed by one of his own tanks “as a result of his brigade’s casualties,” Western officials said yesterday.

Yuri Medvechek led the Russian 37th Motor Rifle Brigade. And Lt. Gen. Yakov Rezantsev, 48, commander of the 49th Combined Arms Division, became the fifth Russian general to be killed – by Ukrainian shelling.

Several sources working with Ukraine’s intelligence organization InformNapalm warned Russia of a chemical attack using sarin gas.

Pro-Kremlin TV presenter Vyacheslav Nikonov claimed that Russians on the Ukraine-Polish border saw a deployment of American and Polish troops ready for a peacekeeping mission.

Military commentator Colonel Yury Knutov warned that this would be a declaration of war, adding: “To win, we must use tactical nuclear weapons.”

In Kharkiv in the north-east, six people were killed and 17 injured in a night air raid.

Another six died and 15 were injured in a rocket attack on an auxiliary snake on Thursday.

The northern town of Korosten has beefed up its defenses after NATO warned that Russian ally Belarus was “likely” preparing for an offensive.

A senior US official said Russia is now prioritizing taking Donbass in the east, in what could be an attempt to influence the negotiations.