the mayor of Mariupol reported this Wednesday that some 5,000 civilians were killed there last month, since Russian troops began the siege of the city, located in southeastern Ukraine.

Vadym Boichenko said to be among the dead 210 children and Russian forces attacked hospitals, including one in which 50 people were burned to death.

He added, according to the AP agency, that more than 90% of the infrastructure of the city is destroyed because of Russian bombs and lawsuits.

Russian forces cut off water, food and fuel supplies to the city, as bombs and artillery attacked it.

Taking over the city will give Russia a land corridor on the Crimean Peninsula, which is in Ukraine and which Russia invaded in 2014.

UK defense officials said 160,000 people are still trapped in the city, which before the war had 430,000 inhabitants. A humanitarian aid caravan accompanied by the Red Cross has not successfully attempted to enter the city since Friday.

Meanwhile, in the streets of Bucha and other towns surrounding the Ukrainian capital from which Russian forces withdrew, researchers are trying to document what appears to be a massacre of civilians. Some of the victims were shot at close range. Others were found hands tied or with burns on the skin.

At a Bucha cemetery, workers began loading a food truck with more than 60 corpses that had apparently been collected in recent days to be sent to a facility for further examination.

There are still bodies to be collected in Bucha. Two bodies were sent from the AP agency inside a residence in a neighborhood that remained quiet. Occasionally the roar of the town’s cleaning workers mines and unexploded ordnance.

In Andriivka, a town about 60 kilometers west of kyiv, two policemen from the nearby town of Makariv went on Tuesday to identify a man whose body was lying in a field next to the tank tracks. Authorities discovered 20 bodies in the Makariv area, Captain Alla Pustova said.

Andriivka residents said Russians arrived in the area in early March and took locals ’phones. Several people were arrested and later released. The whereabouts of the others are unknown. Some residents recounted how they took shelter for several weeks in cellars they normally use to store vegetables during the winter.

“At first we were scared, now we’re hysterical,” said Valentyna Klymenko, 64. She, her husband and two neighbors survived the siege by sleeping on sacks of potatoes covered with mattresses and blankets. .At first we didn’t cry. now we are crying.

DD