The human cost of Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine has been laid bare in a series of graphic pictures from the city of Mariupol.
WARNING – STORY CONTAINS PICTURES SOME MAY FIND DISTURBING
One of them shows a father named Serhii weeping over the lifeless body of his teenage son, Iliya.
The boy is lying on a hospital trolley covered by a bloody sheet.
His father was photographed cradling his son’s head.
The tragic scene was captured at a maternity hospital that has been converted into a medical ward in the southern Ukrainian city on Wednesday.
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Iliya is one of many victims of a relentless Russian bombardment that has reduced parts of the strategically-vital Azov Sea port to rubble.
In other pictures, paramedics are seen attending to some of the city’s wounded, including an elderly lady lying on the floor of her home next to a pool of blood.
The images of injured civilians arriving at hospital illustrates both the awful impact of the conflict on ordinary Ukrainians as well as the doubtfulness of Kremlin assurances that their forces are only attacking military targets.
City plunged into darkness, isolation and fear
Continued shelling has damaged the city’s power supplies, plunging it into darkness, isolation and fear.
Electricity and phone services were largely down on Thursday, and homes and shops faced food and water shortages.
Without phone connections, medics did not know where to take the wounded.
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Pyotr Andriushchenko, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor, said they were facing a humanitarian catastrophe with the city effectively surrounded by Russian forces, preventing the evacuation of the civilians.
The UN human rights office updated its official tally of civilians killed since the invasion began, saying some 249 people have been killed and 533 injured in total – an update on the 227 deaths and 525 injuries counted yesterday.
Some 17 of those killed were children and 27 were women, the latest count found.
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