KYIV, Ukraine — A Russian airstrike hit a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of people had taken shelter in recent days as a siege on the southern port city tightened, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, but there was no immediate word on casualties.
If large numbers of civilians were inside in the building — shown by satellite imagery earlier in the week to have the word “children” marked in large letters on the ground in front and at the back of it — it could prove one of the worst atrocities of the nearly 3-week old conflict.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, posted before and after photos of the stately, white-columned Drama Theater in the heart of the Russian-encircled city, saying that “hundreds of innocent civilians were hiding” within its walls. Mariupol, under heavy bombardment, was already the venue for some of the war’s most harrowing reports of suffering.
