Authorities in Ukraine allege that Russian troops bombed a school housing hundreds of people.
The school, which reportedly housed around 400 people and was located in war-torn Mariupol, was struck on Saturday.
“Yesterday, the Russian occupiers dropped bombs on an art school No 12,” the city council said via Telegram on Sunday, according to Al Jazeera. The building had been destroyed, and “peaceful civilians are still under the rubble,” the council noted.
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City officials did not provide any details about if anyone had died or how many were trapped beneath the rubble, claiming they could not get close to the destroyed school due to the fighting in the streets.
Authorities are also alleging that some residents of Mariupol were being “forcibly taken to Russia [and] stripped of their Ukrainian passports and given a piece of paper that carries no legal weight and is not recognized by the entire civilized world.” Russia has deported more than 1,000 residents of Mariupol to “filtration camps,” said Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, “checking their phones and seizing [their] Ukrainian documents.”
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The school bombing is the latest attack by Russian forces on civilian structures. Russian forces bombed a theater in Mariupol on Wednesday, burying hundreds of residents within its structure. Thankfully, the bomb structure beneath the theater was still intact, allowing the majority of residents to survive the explosion. At least 130 have been rescued from the rubble of the theater, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Over 3.3 million Ukrainian refugees have fled the country since the beginning of the war, according to the United Nations.
