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Russian troops were holding civilians captive at a hospital in Mariupol on Tuesday, a Ukrainian official said.
The head of Donetsk’s regional administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on his official Telegram that doctors and patients were being held against their will in the city’s regional intensive care facility, also known as Hospital Number 2, CNN reported.
“It is impossible to get out of the hospital. They shoot hard, we sit in the basement,” an unnamed hospital employee said, according to Kyrylenko.
“Cars have not been able to drive to the hospital for two days. High-rise buildings around us are burning … the Russians have rushed 400 people from neighboring buildings to our hospital. We can’t leave.”
The hospital has been treating patients in the basement since being partially destroyed in the fighting, Kyrylenko said.
Mariupol, a southern port city on the Sea of Azov, has been besieged by Russian forces for more than a week. Russian airstrikes have hit civilian infrastructure including a maternity hospital, and the Kremlin-backed blockade has kept the city from receiving much-needed food, water and electrical power.
Sergei Orlov, deputy mayor of Mariupol, called the situation at the hospital “a war crime.”
“The biggest hospital in the 17th district of our cities is captured by Russian troops and the Russian army used doctors and patients as hostages in this building. We do not have any access to them,” he told CNN.
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