World News | Mariupol Official Says Russians Bombing Plant

Lviv, Apr 22 (AP) A city official in besieged Mariupol says Russian forces are continuing to bomb a massive steel mill where Ukrainian fighters are holed up.

Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol's mayor, told The Associated Press on Friday that “every day they drop several bombs on Azovstal, despite false promises not to touch the defenders”. Andryushchenko added that “fighting, shelling, bombing do not stop”.

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The Azovstal plant is the last stronghold of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, which the Russians has blocked for nearly two weeks and declared victory over this week. Ukrainian authorities have estimated that 1,000 civilians are inside the plant along with the fighters.

A day after satellite images came to light that indicated mass graves outside the port city in southeastern Ukraine, Andryushchenko said local residents reported that Russian forces were using mobile crematoria at two locations.

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Initial estimates said the apparent mass graves could hold up to 9,000 bodies, but Andryuschenko said there could be more.

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Berlin: The International Atomic Energy Agency says its director general will visit the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant next week, on the anniversary of the 1986 disaster there.

The Vienna-based IAEA said Friday that Rafael Mariano Grossi will head a team of experts from the UN nuclear watchdog that will be at Chernobyl on April 26, which is 36 years since the day a reactor at the plant exploded.

The IAEA says the team will deliver “vital equipment” and conduct radiological and other assessments at the site, which Russian forces held for five weeks until they withdrew on March 31.

The experts will repair remote monitoring systems that stopped transmitting data to the IAEA's headquarters at the state of the war.

Grossi said in a statement that the Chernobyl visit “will be followed by more IAEA missions to this and other nuclear facilities in Ukraine in the coming weeks.”

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Washington: Pentagon press secretary John Kirby says assessments show Ukrainian troops are still contesting the southern city of Mariupol despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's claim of victory in the battle for the city in Ukraine's industrial heartland, home to coal mines, metal plants and heavy-equipment factories.

Putin on Thursday ordered his troops not to storm a giant Mariupol steel mill where an estimated 2,000 Ukrainians remain holed up but to seal it off - in an apparent bid to free up his troops for the broader campaign in the east.

Kirby said it was “unclear” why Putin did that and Putin's words need to be viewed with scepticism.

“They made this big show yesterday of him saying he wasn't gonna go into that plant and try to eradicate the people that are there,” Kirby told CNN on Friday. “I think we have to watch and see what the Russians actually do here. What we would tell you this morning is that we still assess that Mariupol is contested, that it hasn't been taken by the Russians and that there's still an active Ukrainian resistance. So they continue to fight for that city.”

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Seoul: South Korea's Foreign Ministry says it's trying to confirm intelligence that a South Korean citizen who had come to Ukraine as a volunteer fighter to defend the country against the Russian attack has been killed.

The ministry said Friday it received the information from an unspecified foreign government but didn't immediately provide more details.

The ministry said there were at least four South Koreans who went into Ukraine without government authorization. It pleaded them to quickly return home as the war escalates with Russia's new offensive in eastern Ukraine.

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Copenhagen: Latvian Prime Minister - Krisjanis Karins pointed out Friday that it is necessary to lessen Russia's ability to finance its war in Ukraine, and this includes sanctions at the European Union level on all Russian banks and all energy resources, including natural gas and oil.

His Lithuanian counterpart Ingrida Simonyte stressed the importance of continuing to put pressure on the Kremlin by strengthening sanctions. Kaja Kallas of Estonia agreed. They spoke after a meeting of the Baltic Council of Ministers, the Baltic News Service said.

The parliaments of Latvia and Estonia on Thursday adopted a statement on Russia's war crimes and genocide in Ukraine.

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Berlin: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is defending his centre-left party's record on relations with Russia against criticism following the war in Ukraine.

Scholz's Social Democrats have long been proud of the legacy of Cold War rapprochement pursued by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. But critics accuse it of having clung too much to close relations with Russia, particularly over recent years.

Scholz made clear in an interview with weekly Der Spiegel published Friday that he sees no need for the party to chew over its stance, and said that it “doesn't have to accept” the criticism. He argued that its policies of detente set the ground for overcoming Europe's Cold War-era division, and said it always backed a strong German military and integration with the West.

Scholz decried what he called “distorting and defamatory portrayals” of the Social Democrats' policies toward Europe and Russia going back to West Germany's early post-World War II years.

He did not, however, mention ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's ties with the Russian energy industry, which Scholz has urged Schroeder to end.

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Kyiv: A top Ukrainian official says no humanitarian corridors for civilian evacuations will be open in Ukraine on Friday because it is unsafe.

In a post on the messaging app Telegram, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk asked people awaiting evacuation from war zones to “be patient” and “hang in there.”

Vereshchuk said Russian forces offered to open a corridor for military surrender but not for an estimated 1,000 civilians sheltering at a steel mill that is the last Ukrainian stronghold in besieged southern city of Mariupol.

The Russian Defense Ministry on Friday said Moscow was ready at any moment to introduce a “regime of silence” for both the troops and civilians at Azovstal. But Ukrainian troops must raise white flags in determined areas around the plant before evacuations can begin, the ministry said. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)