1,300 people stuck in basement of bombed Mariupol theater

PBC News:  Liudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman, said on Ukrainian television Friday that 130 people had been rescued from a bombed theater in Mariupol.

But 1,300 people were still stuck in the building’s basement, she added.

The theater in the besieged city of Mariupol, where more than 1,000 civilians were said to be sheltering, was bombed on Wednesday, CNBC reports.

Satellite images taken on March 14 by U.S. government-linked Maxar appear to show the theater prior to the bombing, with the word “children” spelled out — in Russian — in large letters in front of and behind the building.

Russia denied that its forces were responsible for the bombing, which was decried by Ukrainian officials as a war crime.

Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said in an address on Thursday that “the building was clearly marked as having children inside, but Russia bombed it anyway.”