LVIV: Ukrainian authorities said the Russian military bombed an art school where about 400 people had taken refuge in the port city of Mariupol, where Presi­dent Volodymyr Zelensky said an unrelenting siege by Russian troops would go down in history for what he said were war crimes.

Local authorities said the schools building was destroyed and people could remain under the rubble. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Russian forces on Wednesday also bombed a theater in Mariupol where civilians were sheltering. City authorities said 130 people were rescued but many more could remain under the debris. A Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital in Mariupol earlier in the war.

To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come, Zelensky said in a video address to the nation.

Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth, Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said from a rubble-strewn street in a video addressed to Western leaders that was authenticated by The Associated Press.

Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2022