People are attacking each other for food as Russian forces bombard Ukrainian city of Mariupol: Red Cross

• Locals in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol have started attacking each other for food, the Red Cross says.
• The humanitarian situation in Mariupol "is becoming increasingly dire and desperate," the ICRC said.

Desperate locals in Mariupol, Ukraine, have started attacking each other for food as Russian forces have completely encircled and bombarded the port city of roughly half a million people, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

The humanitarian situation in Mariupol — where Russian forces bombed a maternity and children's hospital in a deadly attack this week — "is becoming increasingly dire and desperate," the ICRC said.

The organization said that "hundreds of thousands of people" in the besieged southeastern city "have no food, water, heat, electricity, or medical care."

Sasha Volkov, the humanitarian group's deputy head of sub-delegation in Mariupol, detailed the alarming situation in an audio message that was recorded on Wednesday and later released by the agency.

"People started to attack each other for food," Volkov said. "People started to ruin someone's car to take the gasoline out."

Volkov said "many people" have reported having no food for their children, while "some people still have food," but he is "not sure for how long it will last."

Ukrainian citizens in the city are also in need of medication, especially cancer and diabetes patients, Volkov said, "but there is no way to find it any more in the city."

Hospitals, he added, "are partially functioning."

Volkov said there are approximately 65 people in the building he is in.

"We bring all the food that we have in our house," he said. "We also visited destroyed and damaged houses of our colleagues to pick up remaining food there."

Volkov continued, "We will have food for a few days. We have started to get sick, many of us, because of the humidity and cold that we have."

Ukrainian officials have said that Mariupol is being attacked on all sides and that Russian forces have blocked the delivery of food and water supply, destroyed communication infrastructure, and bombed all of the city's power lines, cutting off electricity.

"The war waged by Russia isn't simply treacherous — it's a war crime," Serhiy Orlov, the deputy mayor of Mariupol, told reporters during a Zoom call on Wednesday.

"The only aim of which is the genocide and we have seen for ourselves that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin aims to capture Mariupol despite any destruction, despite the human cost," he said.

The city, Orlov said, has "reached the medieval times because the only way to cook food is an open fire."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday accused Russia of blocking humanitarian aid to besieged cities in Ukraine so Russian forces can "humiliate our people."

Putin ordered Russia's military assault on Ukraine in the early morning hours of February 24.

Since then Russian troops have targeted key cities throughout the country with military strikes, but have been met with fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces.

The Russian invasion has already left hundreds of Ukrainian civilians, including children, dead.