Thread by @thetimes

🔺 JUST IN: A theatre where civilians were sheltering in the besieged city of Mariupol has been destroyed by Russian bombing thetimes.co.uk/article/us-to-…

Scores of people are feared to have been hiding inside when the building was attacked today.

The council said the number of casualties was unknown but Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian MP, told CNN that thousands of people had been sheltering there in the past two weeks

Mariupol, a port city of 420,000 people near the Russian border, has been under almost constant bombardment for two weeks. It has become a symbol of resistance and the human cost of President Putin’s war on Ukraine thetimes.co.uk/article/pregna…

Mariupol city council said that the Russian strike "purposefully and cynically destroyed the Drama Theatre in the heart of Mariupol. The plane dropped a bomb on a building where hundreds of peaceful . . . residents were hiding"

A picture posted online, apparently of the aftermath of the strike, showed a large pile of rubble with twisted metal and smoke rising from the ruins.

The Ukrainian foreign minister said these pictures showed the theatre before and after Russian bombing

Russian forces have reportedly entered the city and are holding 400 civilians hostage in a hospital, local officials said thetimes.co.uk/article/war-in…

Access to the port is limited and aid and basic provisions are thought to be running extremely low. There have been suggestions that disease is spreading. One report said that people were bleeding radiators to drink the water

Military experts have said that the siege is reminiscent of Russia’s campaigns in Syria and Chechnya, where Aleppo and Grozny were bombarded into submission. The civilian populations suffered huge losses

“This is how you do urban warfare on the cheap, if you aren’t confident in the training or morale of your soldiers,” Mark Galeotti, a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said.

“The last few weeks have shown the Russian army isn’t exactly thriving”