Ukraine’s piled-up corpses are being carried out of the Mariupol thép steel plant

After nearly two months trapped inside the strategic Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, a woman named Yuliia and her three daughters have finally escaped with stories that are almost too horrifying to tell.

Yuliia, who shared her video diary with a friend in the UK who gave it to the BBC, said she and her children get excited every time it rains because it means they will have water For drinking. “When it started to rain, they could first drink from the puddle and the water was delicious, very tasty,” she said in the video diary. “Then they found some pans to fill with water.”

Yuliia, who hid with her children in a makeshift bomb shelter at the bottom of her demolished apartment complex, said she feeds her children one meal a day before bed so they can sleep well. “I have money but I cannot buy anything because there is nothing anywhere, everything is broken, everything is looted and destroyed.”

Finally, she and her children, aged 11, 6 and 3, reached relative safety in Zaporizhzhia. They are being joined by hundreds of other Ukrainian civilians, including some of the last people being evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant — along with the corpses that survivors must have piled up in one of the streets. underground tunnel. Drone images over the factory show trucks believed to carry bodies to mass graves. It is not clear who is in charge of the burials.

Most of the 1,000 civilians hiding in the factory are linked to it, or are employees like Natalia Usmanova, who told Reuters of her experience. “The shelling was too strong and it kept hitting near us. At the exit of the bomb shelter, on the top few steps, one could breathe because there was not enough oxygen. I’m even scared to step outside and get some fresh air,” she said. “We didn’t see any sunlight. We were very scared.”

She described the lack of hygiene, including having to use a bag to go to the bathroom at night and eating only one meal a day. Usmanova told Reuters: “I was afraid that the bunker wouldn’t be able to withstand it – I was terrified. “When the bunker started shaking I was so excited, my husband can confirm that. I was very worried that the bunker would get stuck. “

Efforts to resume evacuations were hampered Sunday and Monday by sporadic shelling and reports from within, including from Ukrainian forces massing with civilians, indicating the situation increasingly serious.

Some of the evacuees were taken to a Russian “filtration center” set up in Bezimenne, about 15 miles away, according to CNN. Once registered, they will be taken to Russia.

Meanwhile, Ukraine says it has sunk two Russian military ships in the Black Sea with drone strikes, showing video of a Bayraktar TB-2 armed drone crashing into two ships. Raptor class patrol. Outside sources have not confirmed the strike.