Kyiv said it is verifying reports that Russian forces had used chemical weapons in the besieged port city of Mariupol while civilians are fleeing from areas of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday ahead of an anticipated Russian offensive.
The battle for Mariupol reaches a decisive phase, with Ukraine troops fighting in Azovstal industrial district, the lynchpin between Russian-held areas to the west and east.
Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said the government was checking unverified information that Russia may have used chemical weapons while besieging Mariupol.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had said on Monday night that Russia could resort to chemical weapons as it continued to built-up troops in the eastern Donbas region for a new assault on Mariupol.
The United States and Britain also said they were trying to verify the reports. If Russia had used chemical weapons, "all options were on the table" in response, British Junior Defence Minister James Heappey said in London.
If proved right, it would mark a dangerous new development in a war that has already left a trail of death of destruction in Ukraine.
Intelligence consultant Justin Crump told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the chemical attack, if verified, could fit a wider pattern of Russian behaviour on the battlefield.
But Crump acknowledges that the situation is “very uncertain” in Mariupol.
The attack claims were first made yesterday by the Azov Battalion, a far-right Ukrainian militia fighting in the city.
In a video shared on Telegram, the group's founder and former commander Andriy Biletskyy said chemicals had been dropped over the city's Azovstal steelworks, which was being guarded by the Azov Battalion.
An armoured vehicle of pro-Russian troops is seen in the street during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol/Reuters
More than 10,000 civilians are reoprted as killed in Mariupol. The southeastern port city of Mariupol has seen some of the heaviest attacks and civilian suffering in the 6-week-old war, but the land, sea and air assaults by Russian forces fighting to capture it have increasingly limited information on circumstances inside the city.
Speaking by phone Monday with The Associated Press, Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused Russian forces of having blocked weeks of attempted humanitarian convoys into the city in part to conceal the carnage. Boychenko said the death toll in Mariupol alone could surpass 20,000.
A family mourns a relative killed during the war with Russia, as dozens of black bags containing more bodies of victims are seen strewn across the graveyard in the cemetery in Bucha/AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
The U.N. children’s agency said nearly two-thirds of all Ukrainian children have fled their homes in the six weeks since Russia’s invasion began. The United Nations has verified 142 children have been killed and 229 injured, though the actual numbers are likely much higher.
Ukrainian authorities accuse Russian forces of committing atrocities, including a massacre in the town of Bucha, outside Kyiv, airstrikes on hospitals and a missile attack that killed at least 57 people last week at a train station.
In Bucha, the work of exhuming bodies from a mass grave in a churchyard resumed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his forces carrying out Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine have been acting bravely, efficiently and using the most modern weapons, Tass news agency reports.
-AP/BBC/Reuters