People Crying On Streets, Explosions, Mariupol In Hysteria Video

Gravity of the Ukraine crisis has been underscored by more deadly clashes in the southern city of Mariupol, as seen in the raw video below.

At least five people have died and 40 wounded with most having bullet wounds to the legs and chest from automatic weapons, according to the Guardian.

In one hospital, six of the 15 casualties were policemen. Two bodies were visible on the street outside the police building, one of them of a policeman.

Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said on his Facebook page that 20 separatists were killed and four captured, during an operation to free the police station from “terrorists”.

Mariupol locals had a different version, claiming police crossed to the side of the separatists, and both had been attacked by the army.

With the chief of police supposedly taken hostage by the separatists, however, it seems likely that police, like much of the city’s population, had been split over whom to support, according to the Guardian.

Mariupol is one of at least a dozen cities in eastern Ukraine in which pro-Russian groups are agitating to follow Crimea’s lead in seceding from Ukraine.

Mariupol is in southeastern Ukraine on the north coast of the Sea of Azov at the mouth of the Kalmius, with a population of 492,176. It is the tenth largest city in Ukraine and the second largest in Donetsk oblast.

Officials said Friday that the referendum planned for Sunday was not about independence or joining Russia, but simply giving the region more autonomy. Speeches from the stage were unequivocal.

“We are Russians, and Russia is our homeland,” said Denis Pushilin, the de facto head of the separatist movement. “Russians here are not occupiers. They are our brothers.”

Sources: The Guardiam, YouTube

Photo Credit: ЄVROMAYDAN @ euromaidan