Nicholas Cecil

A frantic rescue operation was being launched on Thursday to try to save hundreds of civilians, including children, believed to have been sheltering under a theatre in Mariupol which was bombed by Russian forces, according to reports.

© via REUTERS A view shows Donetsk Regional Theatre of Drama destroyed by an airstrike in MariupolThe BBC reported that civic authorities were saying the bomb shelter had held up despite being hit by the massive blast.

Ukrainian officials say the fate of people thought to have been sheltering in the theatre in the besieged city in southern Ukraine was still uncertain because the entrance to the shelter was under the rubble caused by the Russian airstrike.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional administration, said on Telegram on Wednesday evening that “several hundred” residents of Mariupol were in the Drama Theatre.

Maxar Technologies, a private US company, distributed satellite imagery which it said was from March 14 and showed the word “children” in large Russian script painted on the ground outside the red-roofed building.

MP Dmytro Gurin, whose parents are trapped in the city, told the BBC: “The (theatre) building is destroyed, we have more than 1,000 women and children in the bomb shelter, in the basement.

“Minutes ago we had an information that the bomb shelter survived and people there survived.

“We don’t know yet whether we have wounded people, or killed people. But it looks like most of them have survived and are ok.”

“The bomb shelter in Mariupol Drama Theatre has survived the brutal Russian missile,” tweeted, Iuliia Mendel believed to be an ex-spokesperson to the President of Ukraine

“At least, majority stayed alive after bombing. People are getting out from the rubble.”

“It’s a miracle – civilians that were hiding in a basement at the Drama Theater in Mariupol survived the air strike,” tweeted Illia Ponomarenko, defence reporter for the Kyiv Independent.

“Now they are getting evacuated from underneath the ruins.”

The Standard could not confirm whether anyone had yet to emerge from the destroyed building.

Mr Kyrylenko earlier rejected the claims by the Russian military that the Azov battalion was headquartered in the theatre, stressing that “only civilians” were in it when it was struck on Wednesday.

He said the airstrike also hit the Neptune swimming pool complex. “Now there are pregnant women and women with children under the rubble there. It’s pure terrorism!” the official said.

In London, Foreign Office minister James Cleverly stressed evidence of the attack, and other alleged atrocities, needed to be collected so those responsible can be brought to trial for war crimes.

Reports of survivors in rubble of Mariupol theatre as frantic rescue launched (msn.com)