300 died in last week's airstrike on theatre in Mariupol, city government says

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About 300 people died in a Russian airstrike last week on a theatre being used as a bomb shelter in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the city's government said Friday, citing eyewitnesses.

When the theatre was struck March 16, an enormous inscription reading "CHILDREN" was posted outside in Russian, intended to be visible from the skies above.

It was not immediately clear whether emergency workers had finished excavating the site or how the eyewitnesses arrived at the death toll. Soon after the airstrike, Ludmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament's human rights commissioner, said more than 1,300 people had been sheltering in the building.

Mariupol has been the scene of some of the worst devastation of the war. The eastern port has been under siege since the invasion's early days. Tens of thousands of people are still believed to be trapped inside with no access to food, medicine, power or heat.

Mariupol's city government says the Kremlin's main political party has opened a political office in a shopping mall on the outskirts of the besieged city. According to the post on the city's Telegram channel, the United Russia office is distributing promotional materials as well as cellphone cards for an operator that functions in the nearby Russia-backed separatist regions.

Mariupol's communication links have been all but severed since the siege began in early March. Cellphone, TV and radio towers have been targeted in Russian airstrikes and artillery barrages.

The UN human rights office said on Friday that it had confirmed 1,081 civilian deaths and 1,707 injuries in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, noting that the real toll was likely considerably higher.

UN human rights monitors are working to verify reports of additional deaths in places of intense clashes in the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv and the region of Donestsk, where the city of Mariupol is located, the statement said.

The Russian news agency Interfax, citing Russia's defence ministry, said on Friday that 1,351 Russian soldiers have died since the start of the military operation, while 825 soldiers have been wounded.

In the shelled city of Kharkiv, mostly elderly women came to collect food and other urgent supplies. In the capital of Kyiv, ashes of the dead are piling up at the main crematorium because so many relatives have left, leaving urns unclaimed.

A month into their assault, Russian forces have failed to capture any major Ukrainian city but have instead been bombarding and encircling them, driving nearly a quarter of the country's 44 million people from their homes.

Volodymyr Borysenko, mayor of Boryspol, an eastern suburb where Kyiv's main airport is located, said 20,000 civilians had left the area, answering a call to clear out so Ukrainian troops could push the Russians farther back.

The northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv has in effect been cut off by Russian forces, the regional governor said on Friday.