The Ukrainian city of Mariupol is now in Russian hands, after more than two months of bitter fighting and constant Russian shelling that destroyed massive swaths of the city and killed thousands of civilians, according to local officials.
After the horror of Russia’s assault, tens of thousands of people are trying to identify their dead loved ones before it’s too late.
The number of bodies in Mariupol is overwhelming. Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian mayor, estimated that 22,000 died in the two months of fighting. However, a person among several coordinating burials in the city who spoke on condition of anonymity said they believed the total was closer to 50,000.
There are bodies are still trapped under rubble or in flats or buried in shallow makeshift or mass graves – a number of which appear to have been poorly marked or even unmarked. Others were left in the street and rotted, and some may have disintegrated if they were hit directly or burned in a fire.
As a result, Mariupol could now be facing a deadly cholera outbreak, local officials have warned. An adviser to the occupied port city’s mayor said Tuesday that its drinking water had been contaminated by decomposing garbage and corpses, increasing the risk of a cholera outbreak. Summer heat has hastened the decomposition of thousands of corpses under the rubble, adding to the problem.
In a different TV interview, Andryushchenko said Russian authorities controlling Mariupol were effectively shutting down the city and introducing a self-imposed quarantine.
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