Cholera and other deadly diseases could kill thousands of people in Mariupol in southern Ukraine because of corpses on the streets that no one collects during the coming summer and warmer weather, the mayor said on Friday.
Mariupol is polluted by corpses
Mayor Vadim Boychenko said that the wells were polluted because of the corpses of people killed during the weeks of the Russian bombing and siege and that the Russian occupier is progressing very slowly with the collection of corpses.
– Dysentery and cholera have appeared. Unfortunately, the assessment of our doctors is the following: that the war, which took over 20,000 inhabitants, unfortunately, due to the outbreak of the disease, will probably kill thousands of Mariupol residents – he pointed out on state television.
Boychenko, who is outside Mariupol, said the city is in quarantine.
Ukraine says there are currently 100,000 people in Mariupol. The bustling city before the war had about 430,000 inhabitants, but now it is an urban wasteland.
“Medieval Ghetto”
Boychenko, who said last month that the Russian bombing had turned Mariupol into a “medieval ghetto”, said residents were forced to drink water from wells because the city’s water and sewage system was no longer operational.
He called on the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to work on establishing a humanitarian corridor to help residents leave the city, which Ukrainian authorities say still lacks a centralized water, electricity, or gas supply.
Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of the possibility of a cholera outbreak in Mariupol.
