bbc Latest English news | bbc Online News in English at Lokmattimes.com

Doha, March 28 French Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian said "Mariupol is the new Aleppo", as he compared the largest Syrian city that witnessed some of the worst fighting in the country's brutal civil war to the besieged Ukrainian port city where ongoing Russian attacks have led to widespread destruction and civilian deaths.Addressing the Doha Forum on Sunday, Le Drian said that world needs to act immediately to help Mariupol, as the scale of the disaster in Ukraine's south-eastern city demands immediate action, the BBC reported."You can very well see that Mariupol is a second Aleppo with, I hope, a collective guilt if we don't do anything."Mariupol is a siege war that Russia's been in for a month now. Maybe it wasn't envisaged as a siege war but today we're in siege warfare, and Mariupol is one of the most striking examples."Military sieges are horrible wars because civil populations are massacred, annihilated. The suffering is terrible," the BBC quoted the French Minister as saying.Since the war began on February 24, Russia has continuously bombarded the strategic port city, triggering the relocation of thousands of civil and reducing infrastructure to ruins.Ukraine has also accused Moscow of forcibly moving Mariupol civil to Russian territories, the BBC reported.Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 40,000 had been moved from Ukraine to Russian-held territory without any coordination with the government in Kiev.Russia has denied the allegation.While 140,000 civil have managed to escape from Mariupol, another 170,000 are still trapped there, according to the city council.Mariupol is key to Russia's ongoing invasion. If the city falls, it would give Russia control of one of Ukraine's biggest ports and create a land corridor between Crimea and the Russian-backed regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor

Bbc, NewsFOLLOW

Bbc, Latest News

London, March 31 Jeremy Fleming, head of the UK's cyber and security agency GCHQ, believes Russia has massively ... ...

London, March 30 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has played down any hopes of a breakthrough in the talks ... ...

London, March 30 UK scientists are working on a genetic test that can predict how well drugs work ... ...

Kabul, March 30 With girls banned from returning to secondary schools, the World Bank has suspended four projects ... ...

Kyiv/London, March 30 The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces says the Russian withdrawal pledge is designed to ... ...

Beijing, March 28 Global oil prices have fallen as a nine-day Covid-19 lockdown came into force in Shanghai ... ...

Kabul, March 28 The Taliban-led government in Afghanistan has decided to ban the broadcasts of international media outlets ... ...

Doha, March 28 French Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian said "Mariupol is the new Aleppo", as he ... ...