A six-year-old girl died of dehydration under the ruins of her destroyed house in Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine, currently under siege by the Russian army, according to the city’s mayor, Vadim Boitchenko.
It is not known how long the girl, named Tanya, was trapped alive in the ruins, where her mother was also found dead.
“In the last minutes of her life, (Tanya) was alone, exhausted, scared and terribly thirsty. This is just one of the many stories that happen in Mariupol, which has been under siege for eight days,” the mayor said in the Telegram account. Township.
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky also spoke about the girl’s death in a video released Tuesday morning, once again calling on Western countries to help Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
“Mariupol is surrounded, blocked, exhausted, tortured,” he said.
“For the first time in decades, perhaps for the first time since the Nazi invasion, a child died of dehydration,” Zelensky exclaimed.
Some 300,000 civilians have been immobilized for days by the fighting in the strategic port of Mariúpol, in the southeast of the country, on the Sea of Azov, deprived of water, food and electricity and without access to humanitarian aid.
Several evacuation attempts have failed in recent days.
