Ukraine Survivors leaving basement of Mariupol theatre after Russia’s airstrike
All morning, Russian planes had been circling the skies above the city.
Mariia Rodionova, a 27-year-old teacher, had been living in the theatre for ten days, having fled her ninth-floor apartment with her two dogs. They camped next to the stage in an auditorium near the back of the building.
That morning she had got some fish scraps from an outdoor field kitchen to feed her dogs but then realised they hadn't drunk any water. So at about 10:00, she tied her dogs to her luggage and made her way towards the main entrance where a queue was forming for hot water.
And then the bomb fell.
There was the sound of a clap, thunderous and loud. Then the sound of broken glass. A man came from behind and pushed her to a wall, protecting her with his own body.
The blast was so loud that she felt intense pain in one of her ears, so intense she thought her eardrum must have split. She only realised it hadn't because she could hear the screams of people.
The screams were everywhere. The force of the blast threw another man against a window. He fell on the ground, his face covered with broken glass.
A woman, who also had a wound on her head, tried to help him. Mariia, who had been volunteering at the Ukrainian Red Cross in Mariupol, gathered her senses enough to shout over, telling her to stop.
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