Ukraine's ombudswoman Ludmyla Denisova says a theater in the besieged city of Mariupol has withstood the impact of an airstrike, and that the rescue of civilians from under the rubble of the destroyed building has begun.
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"The building withstood the impact of a high-powered air bomb and protected the lives of people hiding in the bomb shelter," she said on the messaging service Telegram on Thursday.
"Work is underway to unlock the basement" and surviving adults and children are coming out, she wrote. She said there is no information on casualties so far.
Hundreds of men, women and children had taken shelter in the basement of the theater. Russia has denied attacking the theater on Wednesday evening.
Ukrainian authorities struggled to determine the fate of hundreds of civilians who had been sheltering in a theater smashed by a Russian airstrike in the besieged city of Mariupol as officials said Russian artillery Thursday destroyed more civilian buildings in another frontline city.
At least as recently as Monday, the pavement in front of and behind the once-elegant theater was marked with huge white letters spelling out "children" in Russian, according to images released by the Maxar space technology company.
Rubble had buried the entrance to the shelter inside the theater, and the number of casualties was unclear, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said on Telegram. Ukrainian parliament member Sergiy Taruta, a former governor of the Donetsk region where Mariupol is located, later said on Facebook that some people had managed to escape alive from the destroyed building. He did not provide any further details.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office says Russia carried out further airstrikes on the besieged port city of Mariupol early on Thursday morning.
Zelenskyy's office did not report casualties for the latest strikes. They come amid rescue efforts in the city after a theater where hundreds had been sheltering was destroyed Wednesday in what Ukrainian authorities say was a Russian airstrike.
"People are escaping from Mariupol by themselves using their own transport," Zelenskyy's office said, adding the "risk of death remains high" because of Russian forces previously firing on civilians.
The presidential office also reported artillery and airstrikes around the country overnight, including in the Kalynivka and Brovary suburbs of the capital, Kyiv. It said fighting continues as Russian forces try to enter the Ukraine-held city of Mykolaiv in the south and that there was an artillery barrage through the night in the eastern town of Avdiivka.
Ukraine says Russian forces are increasingly resorting to artillery and air strikes as their advance stalls.
The Ukrainian General Staff says "the enemy, without success in its ground operation, continues to carry out rocket and bomb attacks on infrastructure and highly populated areas of Ukrainian cities."
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned on Thursday that the war will disrupt commerce and clog up supply chains, slashing economic growth and pushing prices sharply higher around the globe.
The northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv has experienced "colossal losses and destruction" amid heavy bombardment from Russian artillery and airstrikes, governor Viacheslav Chaus said Thursday.
Chaus told Ukrainian TV that the bodies of 53 people "killed by the Russian aggressor from the ground or from the air" had been delivered to city morgues over the past 24 hours.
The Ukrainian General Prosecutor's Office said Wednesday 10 people were killed in Chernihiv while standing in line for bread. Russia has denied involvement.
Chaus said civilians were hiding in basements and shelters without access to utilities in the city of 280,000 people.
"The city has never known such nightmarish, colossal losses and destruction," he said.
Chernihiv, which is close to the borders with Belarus and Russia, was among the first Ukrainian cities to come under attack from Russian forces when the invasion began three weeks ago.
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