Drone footage shows wreckage of Mariupol with smoking shelled buildings
Watch: Drone footage shows widespread destruction in Mariupol
Drone footage has revealed the devastating results of the Russian attack on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
The video was taken by the city’s Azov battalion, a right-wing extremist unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, which is fighting off Russia’s invasion.
The footage released on Monday shows huge plumes of smoke billowing from a number of large residential buildings, most of them in ruins.
Mariupol has become a grey, smoky wasteland, and the video shows explosions and buildings on fire.
The configuration of destroyed and damaged buildings appears to match satellite images of the city, which has been under Russian bombardment for more than two weeks.
Read more: Street cleaners collect dead bodies in Ukraine after thousands killed by Russian troops
On Monday, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said more than 2,400 civilians in Mariupol have been killed since the Russian invasion began last month.
On Monday, a convoy of at least 160 cars left Mariupol in the first successful attempt to arrange a humanitarian corridor out of the city after more than a week of trying.
A local ceasefire arranged with the Russian forces besieging Mariupol held long enough for the first cars to leave for the city of Zaporizhzhia about 140 miles away, Ukrainian officials said.
But Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said on Monday that shelling by Russian forces was still preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the city.
Mariupol’s deputy mayor, Serhiy Orlov, said the city was under "constant shelling, bombing and some street battles."
Thousands of people have been trapped there for two weeks during the Russian shelling.
Orlov said street cleaners have been collecting the bodies of civilians killed by Russia’s onslaught.
"We can't bury [the victims] in private graves, as those are outside the city and the perimeter is controlled by Russian troops," he told the BBC.
Mariupol’s city council said on Sunday that it was running out of its last supplies of food and water.
It said Russian forces continued to shell non-military targets.
"There is no electricity, water or heating in the city. There is almost no mobile communication. The last reserves of food and water are running out," it said.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press news agency said on Monday that a pregnant woman wounded in the Russian bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol had died along with her baby.
Watch: Mariupol deputy mayor on life in besieged city
The hospital was hit by an air strike last Wednesday, killing at least three other people.
Images of the pregnant woman being carried from the wreckage of the hospital had shocked the world.
She was taken to another hospital where her baby was born by Caesarean section, but showed no signs of life. The woman was pronounced dead a short time later.
