There are now about 600 casualties at Azovstal – policeman from the factory
Iryna Balachuk – Saturday, 14 May 2022, 16:23
Azovstal has about 600 casualties in poor, unsanitary conditions, without medicine, water or food, many of them seriously injured.
Source: the representative of the head of the Police Department in Donetsk Oblast, with the call sign "Police" at "Azovstal", on air during the national 24/7 newscast?
According to "Police": "About casualties – the situation is very bad. There are about 600 of them. The conditions are just awful. Maybe, you have seen photos on social media. To be honest, it is impossible to convey the depressing situation in the hospital ... We periodically collect fuel and technical water, which is available at the factory, and bring it to the hospital.
How to describe the situation itself? Roughly speaking, there is a huge gym, a few dozen bunk beds, and the rest are just on the floor: belongings, personal items, a factory uniform on which fighters without limbs are lying next to each other - one with no arm, one with no leg, one just a casualty. The conditions are completely unsanitary: it has already been getting warmer - there are flies, the groans of pain, the smell is terrible".
Details: "Police" added that there are virtually no medicines or medical instruments. And the operating room itself, since the bombardments, is just a table by the wall.
A police spokesman said on 14 May that an injured person was operated on without anaesthesia - the fighter simply held a belt between his teeth and shouted while medics were "cleaning a hole the size of a tennis ball in his leg."
He added that many seriously injured people have died due to lack of medical care.
There is almost no food or water left at the factory either.
Reminder: On 14 May, relatives of Azovstal defenders called on China to help with the extraction of Ukrainian troops from Mariupol.
Related stories: Face of "Azov steel". Stories about the defenders of Mariupol
We don’t need words, we need actions. What mothers and wives of Azovstal defenders say
Background:
- The Ukrainian Ministry of Transport and Communications has announced that negotiations are underway with the mediation of Turkey, the UN and the ICRC on the evacuation of the military from Azovstal, starting with the serious casualties. Ukraine wants to sign a document on how the evacuation from Azovstal will take place, and preparations are underway to sign it.
- Ukraine is currently negotiating the evacuation of 60 people from Azovstal in Mariupol. Earlier it was reported that negotiations are underway concerning 38 serious (bedridden casualties among the fighters.
- The Russian occupiers refused to allow the process of extracting the defenders of Mariupol by sea to a neutral country. They also said that after all the civilians were taken out of the bunkers, their hands were "untied".
- Turkey offered Russia that it would withdraw Ukrainian troops from Mariupol and guarantee that they would not fight again until the end of the war but would remain in Turkey.
- On 11 May, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that the Ukrainian side offered to exchange the severely injured Ukrainian soldiers who are still at Azovstal for captured Russian soldiers.
