A Russian air strike on Ukrainians sheltering in a theatre "looks to be specific targeting" of a civilian building and a "self-evident breach of international law", a Foreign Office minister said this morning. Ukrainian authorities are still attempting to determine the fate of hundreds of civilians who had bunkered down in the theatre in Mariupol.
Images showed that an entire section of the three-storey building had collapsed after the strike on Wednesday evening. Several hundred people had taken refuge in the building to seek safety from Moscow's three-week siege of the port city, with the pavements outside the venue marked with huge white letters spelling out "children" in Russian, according to images released by the Maxar space technology company.
James Cleverly said the attack appeared to be a "breach" of internationally-agreed armed conflict rules and called for evidence to be documented of the assault to put together a war crime case. The minister for Europe in the Foreign Office was asked on ITV's Good Morning Britain whether he thought the bombing of the shelter "looked like a war crime".
