JAKARTA - Strategically positioned, Mariupol City experienced some of the heaviest bombings since the Russian invasion, leaving thousands dead, while hundreds of thousands more are still trapped in the city.
With its status as a port city, capturing Mariupol could allow Russia to create a land bridge between Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, and two separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine.
Thousands of civilians may have died in the city in southern Ukraine since Russia began the bombing, the head of the UN human rights mission told Reuters on Tuesday, giving its first estimate.
"We think there could be thousands of deaths, civilian casualties, in Mariupol," Matilda Bogner, head of the UN human rights mission in Ukraine which deploys about 60 monitors, said in a virtual interview.
He said the mission did not have a precise estimate but was working to gather more information.
As of Tuesday, the United Nations human rights office had confirmed 1.179 civilians were killed and 1.860 injured across Ukraine in the five-week conflict, amid delays in reporting due to hostilities, a statement said.
Last week Bogner said at a briefing UN monitors had received more information about mass graves in Mariupol, including those that appeared to house 200 bodies.
"In mass graves, we've actually decided now we should call them 'improvised graves,'" Bogner said.
This is because the term 'mass grave' may imply victims of crime, whereas the people who died in Mariupol reflect deaths from various causes, he said.
Civilian casualties from the conflict are believed to be a 'quite small share' of corpses in improvised graves in parks and gardens, he said.
Some people who died naturally were never taken to morgues or individual graves because of the war, while others never made it to doctors, he added. It was not clear if any military victims were buried in improvised graves, he said.
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Separately, local officials, citing witnesses, estimated last week that 300 people were killed in the March 16 bombing of the Mariupol theatre, where people had taken refuge.
Meanwhile, Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told Reuters in a separate interview it had "no direct information" about casualties from the Mariupol theater bombing.
As previously reported, nearly 5.000 people, including about 210 children, have died in Mariupol since Russian forces surrounded it a month ago, Mayor Vadym Boichenko's spokesman said Monday.
The mayor's office also said 90 percent of Mariupol's buildings had been damaged and 40 percent destroyed, including hospitals, schools, kindergartens, and factories.
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