Dreaded disease spike in Mariupol, Ukraine, amid dead bodies

The exiled mayor of the ruined and occupied Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said on Friday he feared an increase in deadly diseases as temperatures rise, given the dead bodies still on the streets of the city.

“There is an epidemic of dysentery and cholera. This is unfortunately the assessment of our doctors: that the war which took more than 20,000 inhabitants… unfortunately, with these outbreaks of infections, will cause thousands more victims, » ​​Mayor Vadym Boychenko told Ukrainian television.

Boychenko, who left the city during its siege and before the Russian occupation, said Mariupol had recently been placed under quarantine.

The battered city has faced the dire need to bury its dead since the start of the war, when Russian blockades and constant shelling left the city’s morgues starved and overwhelmed, forcing local authorities to dig mass graves. to remove dead bodies from the streets.

Months later, the Russian occupiers grapple with the same problem, struggling to recover the bodies of Mariupol’s dead civilians.

As a result, Boychenko said, wells have been poisoned by rotting bodies and corpses rotting in rising summer temperatures.

“They just demolish houses and remove the rubble with the people of Mariupol killed. Because the actual number of bodies under the rubble of destroyed houses is frightening,” Boychenko said on Telegram.

« Nearly 50 to 100 people were killed under almost every destroyed house, and 1,300 high-rise buildings were destroyed in Mariupol. »

Around 100,000 people are believed to have remained in the occupied city, which had a peacetime population of over 430,000.

With post wires