ARCHIVE PHOTO: People pass by a heavily damaged residential building during the Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on May 30, 2022. REUTERS / Alexander Ermochenko / Photo Archive / Photo Archive
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Kyiv, June 10 (Reuters) – Cholera and other deadly diseases could kill thousands in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol as corpses are found uncollected and the summer is warmer. said its mayor on Friday.
Mayor Vadym Boitchenko said the wells had been contaminated by the bodies of people killed during weeks of Russian bombing and siege, and that the gathering of bodies by Russian occupiers in the city was progressing slowly.
“There is an outbreak of dysentery and cholera. This is, unfortunately, the assessment of our doctors: that the war that took more than 20,000 inhabitants … unfortunately, with these outbreaks of infection, it will charge thousands more mariupolites.” , he told national television.
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Boichenko, based outside Mariupol, said the city had been quarantined.
Ukraine says there are now about 100,000 people in Mariupol, a once vibrant city that had a population of about 430,000 before the war, but is now an urban wasteland. Read more
Boitschenko, who said last month that the Russian bombing had turned Mariupol into a “medieval ghetto,” said residents had been forced to drink water from wells because the city had no running water or sewer system in operation. Read more
He urged the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to work to establish a humanitarian corridor to help residents get out of the city, which according to Ukrainian officials does not yet have centralized water, electricity and gas supplies.
The World Health Organization warned last month of a possible cholera outbreak in Mariupol. Read more
The British Defense Ministry said on Friday that there was a risk of a major cholera outbreak in Mariupol because medical services were probably close to collapse. Read more
Russia is struggling to provide basic public services to the population of Russian-occupied territories, he said.
Russia did not immediately comment on Boichenko’s remarks or the British defense ministry. Moscow says its “special military operation” aims to disarm and “deactivate” Ukraine. Kyiv and its allies call it an unprovoked war of aggression to capture territory.
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Report by Max Hunder, edited by Timothy Heritage and Raissa Kasolowsky
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