Over 10,000 civilians killed in Mariupol as a result of criminal actions of the Russian army - mayor

This was announced by the mayor of Mariupol Vadym Boychenko in an interview for the Associated Press.

The mayor of the port city of Mariupol said on Monday that more than 10,000 civilians had died in the Russian siege of the city.

Boychenko also noted that the death toll could exceed 20 thousand, since "the streets of Mariupol are covered with the bodies of the dead".

In addition, the mayor accused Russian troops of blocking humanitarian convoys for several weeks in an attempt to hide the carnage in the city from the outside world.

Boychenko also said that the Russians brought mobile cremation equipment to Mariupol to dispose of the corpses of victims of the blockade. The invaders also took many bodies to a huge shopping center with storage facilities and refrigerators.

"Mobile crematoria arrived in the form of trucks: you open it, and inside the pipe and these bodies are burned", the mayor says.

According to him, about 120,000 civilians in Mariupol are in dire need of food and water. There is no heat supply and mobile communications.

In addition, only those residents who have passed the Russian "filtration camps" are released from the city.

Ukrainian officials allege that Russian forces are seizing the passports of Ukrainian citizens and then moving them to "filtration camps" in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine. After that, Ukrainians are sent to remote regions of Russia.

Boychenko said on Monday that makeshift prisons have been set up for those who have not been "filtered".

A total of 33 thousand people were taken to Russia or to the separatist territory of Ukraine.