"Everything was burning, there were corpses everywhere, and I was just walking through, picking up a cabbage here, a carrot there."
Ukraine has rejected Russia's latest demand to surrender the city of Mariupol as the conflict enters its 26th day.
Russian officials had imposed a deadline of surrender on Ukrainian troops in Mariupol, offering apparent safe passage only in the event of a ceasefire.
That deadline has since passed, as has the possibility of a peaceful resolution.
Amidst the chaos, new eye-witness reports of the ongoing assault have emerged, with particularly harrowing details standing out.
Several accounts from survivors are detailed in a
Financial Times report, including those of residents who have been forced to kill stray dogs for food.
Local authorities have stated that over 2,400 Mariupol residents have been killed since the invasion commenced.
"You hear the words but it’s impossible to really take them in, to believe this is happening," said one local businessman named as Dmytro.
"It is hell on earth.
"Everything was burning, there were corpses everywhere, and I was just walking through, picking up a cabbage here, a carrot there, knowing it meant my family would live another day or two,” he added.
"You become completely desensitised."
Other witnesses have described "post-apocalyptic" scenes on the streets of Mariupol, including stray dogs eating the remains of corpses, and mass public graves in place of formal burial arrangements.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russian forces of deliberately targeting civilians.
Zelensky referred to the bombing of an art school on Sunday, where people were taking shelter from aerial assaults.
"People were hiding there," he said in his latest address.
"Hiding from shelling, from bombing. There were no military positions. There were about 400 civilians, mostly women and children, the elderly.
"They are under the debris. We don’t know how many are alive at the moment."
Speaking on Morning Ireland on RTÉ Radio 1 on Monday, Oliver Carroll of The Economist noted that hunger has become a huge factor, with the last operating supermarket in Mariupol closing its doors a week ago following shelling.
Attempting to draw a comparison in terms of scale, he referred to “Aleppo levels of destruction”.
“People who are still there and people who left; they have one thing to say to the West and that is ‘act now’ because, unfortunately, we’re not going to be talking about thousands of deaths – it’s going to be much worse than that.”
It is estimated that over 10 million people have fled their homes in Ukraine since the conflict began in late February.
Of those, over three million have reportedly successfully escaped to neighbouring countries.
The remaining citizens are currently displaced within the war-torn country.
To date, Ireland has taken in almost 10,000 Ukrainian refugees.
You can read the full Financial Times report
here.
