Russian forces massacre over 10,000 in Mariupol: Mayor Boychencko

Russian troops massacred more than 10,000 people over the past six weeks in Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol, the mayor said.

He said corpses now carpeted the city and that the death toll could surpass 20,000.

The southeastern port city of Mariupol has seen some of the heaviest attacks and civilian suffering in the 6-week-old war.

But the land, sea and air assaults by Russian forces fighting to capture it have increasingly limited information on circumstances inside the city.

Speaking by phone Monday with The Associated Press, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused Russian forces of having blocked weeks of attempted humanitarian convoys into the city in part to conceal the carnage.

Boychenko said the death toll in Mariupol alone could surpass 20,000.

Boychenko also gave new details of allegations by Ukrainian officials that Russian forces have brought mobile cremation equipment to Mariupol to dispose of the corpses of victims of the siege.

Russian forces have taken many bodies to a huge shopping centre where there are storage facilities and refrigerators, Boychenko said.

“Mobile crematoriums have arrived in the form of trucks: You open it, and there is a pipe inside and these bodies are burned,” he said.

Boychenko spoke from a location in Ukrainian-controlled territory but outside Mariupol.

The mayor said he had several sources for his description of the alleged methodical burning of bodies by Russian forces in the city, but did not give further detail on the sources of his information.