The Ukrainian government announced on Saturday the bombardment of a mosque in Mariupol in which around 80 civilians, including Turks, took refuge, which one of them denied who was trying to organize evacuations blocked by the Russians.
“The mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roxolana in Mariupol was bombed by Russian invaders,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in a tweet on Saturday. “More than 80 adults and children are sheltering there, including Turkish citizens,” he added, without specifying when the shelling took place.
This strategic city, bombarded for days, suffered a devastating siege.
However, the president of the Souleiman Mosque Association of Mariupol, Ismail Hacioglu, joined by the Turkish channel HaberTürk on Saturday in the early followingnoon, assured that the district was under fire but that the mosque itself did not had not been touched.
“The Russians are bombarding the area (…) which is 2 km from the mosque, and a bomb fell at a distance of 700 m from the mosque” he had previously indicated on Instagram.
Thirty Turkish civilians are inside the building, “including children”, he said, without specifying the number.
A total of 86 Turkish citizens are still in the city of Mariupol, which his association is trying to bring together, going from house to house, Mr. Hacioglu told Turkish television.
He explained that his association had already tried four times to evacuate the Turks by forming a convoy “but the Russians did not let us pass” at the roadblocks.
“We will try a fifth time,” he said.
Mr. Hacioglu further specified on Instagram that he had two buses to carry out the evacuations.
The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contacted by AFP, said it “did not have any information” on the situation.
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The Turkish consulate in Odessa, a major port in southern Ukraine, called on Twitter on March 7 for Turkish nationals present in Mariupol to “take shelter” in the targeted mosque, “in view of an evacuation to our country”.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) alerted on Friday to the situation in the city of Mariupol where the inhabitants are holed up in cellars, without water, gas, electricity, communications, and in recent days people have been seen fighting for food, an “almost hopeless” situation.
A pediatric hospital and a maternity hospital were hit on Wednesday, killing three and injuring many, sparking international outcry.
In this context, a new attempt at an evacuation corridor was planned to allow civilians to leave the city, in the direction of Zaporozhye, some 200 km to the northwest, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
For days, Ukrainians have claimed that the Russian military has been pounding the evacuation route, preventing evacuations.
