Good Morning Britain (GMB) spoke to the deputy mayor of Mariupol, Sergei Orlov, on Thursday morning (March 10) following Russia's air strike on the Ukrainian city.
The shocking attack over recent days, which included the bombing of a maternity hospital on Wednesday, meant people had to dig a mass grave to bury casualties in the city.
Presenter Ranvir Singh said: "There is a photograph which we are not showing this morning on air because it's breakfast television.
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"But it does show people in Mariupol having to build and dig mass graves because there are potentially - is this right - a thousand civilians who have died in Mariupol?"
Mr Orlov responded: "We can only confirm numbers from the day before yesterday, so the numbers we had were 1,207 killed [civilian] people.
"You must understand that there is only bodies that we can collect on the street - and it's absolutely not possible to bury them in private graves out of the city.
"That's why we've got only one possibility to bury them in a mass grave."
He confirmed that 47 people were buried in the mass grave and it was not possible to identify all of them.
This is the ninth hospital to be destroyed and there is now nowhere to put injured citizens.
Mr Orlov added: “It’s an absolutely awful situation for us and we can not imagine… We do not know how to tell how this can be the 21st Century.”
During the interview, the deputy mayor spoke of hopes of a ceasefire, with thousands of civilians ready to be evacuated.
He continued: “This morning we hope it will become a kind of ceasefire… We are ready to evacuate about 2,000 citizens, but there is no ceasefire unfortunately.
"Ten minutes ago we received information that Russian military aircraft go directly over Mariupol and they bombed the centre of the city.”
He confirmed there’s no electricity, water or sanitary supply in Mariupol and explained that people are collecting wood so they can cook on a fire, and also they are collecting snow to melt for water.
Mariupol city council has reportedly said the attack on the maternity hospital 'killed three people, including a child' and wounded 17 people, including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the rubble.
Images from the scene show that explosions blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building.
Bombs have also fallen on two hospitals in another city west of the capital.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the Russian invasion began on February 24.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under debris.
“A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital,” he said in his nightly video address. “What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?”
Earlier, he had shared a video that showed cheerfully painted hallways strewn with twisted metal following the attack.
Britain’s armed forces minister, James Heappey, said the strike “is a war crime” irregardless of whether it was deliberate or the result of “indiscriminate” fire into a built-up area.
On Thursday, Britain added more oligarchs to its sanctions list, including the owner of Chelsea Roman Abramovich.
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