magnitude of destruction is incredible. i ll get out of the way so you could see what we re seeing right now which is first of all this gaping hole, a large part of the building used to be. but you could see how the rescue and recovery efforts and the clean-up effort are still going on. and officially the ukrainians say this is a search and rescue effort by the chances of finding anybody alive in what you see there in front of you, really is dwindling and going towards zero. and the amount of people who were killed in this incident, they have continued to rise throughout the course of the day. right now we do stand at 40 killed. the russians have come out and claimed that they were not behind this strike. they say this was a stray ukrainian anti-air missile that hit the building and the ukrainians not having any of that. they say that they tracked the missile fired by the russians from the see of azof to here
because the russians are focusing their attention on trying to push to this city where i am in kramatorsk and also of course they re also concentrating their efforts more to the east. today suffering some catastrophic levels of civilian casualties. we re not exactly sure of the numbers but across the region, local authorities say 21 civilians have been killed, victor, so it s a very complex and daily ebb and flow of this fight continues, victor. there s a new convoy of buses of civilians from mariupol, on its way to zaporizhzhia, what do you know about the evacuations specifically at the steel plant? well, still to understand, not least because the russians have been accused of a very intensive campaign to try to dislodge the remaining azof battalion and other marines, alongside what the ukrainians
battalion at the plant confirmed to cnn that the smoke in the video was coming from the steel plant which was hit by a military strike. ukrainian fighters say they hope to evacuate the 100 adults and 20 children still trapped in that steel plant. there are stunning comments from russia s foreign minister sparking outrage in israel and beyond. in an interview, sergey lavrov repeated russia s claims that it s trying to denazi fie ukraine, dismissing the fact that president zelenskyy is jewish. lavrov claimed adolph hitler had jewish blood. clare sebastian joins us now. leaders in israel are reacting very strongly to these claims, what are they saying. reporter: overwhelming outage in israel about this. the context that israel has tried to tread a fine line so far in the conflict. yes, it s condemned the war, it s condemned russia s actions provided aid to ukraine but stopped short of western sanctions on russia. this could threaten the
and you have soldiers there who are making their last stand, trying to fend off the russian advances there. i spoke with the deputy commander of the azof regiment who says there are some cellars and bunkers that have been cut off by rubble and they don t know if there are people down there who might be alive, who might be trapped. yesterday, president zelenskyy announced an operation to evacuate people from that area but at the end of the day, nothing came of it and still nothing we understand, has come of it. i asked that deputy commander yesterday, because keep in mind that he says there are hundreds of injured soldiers under there as well. i asked him how long they might be able to survive given their injuries. translator: i m not going to say how long we could be here, but i m going to say that we re doing everything we can to stabilize them. reporter: would you rather die fighting than surrender yourself to the russians? translator: we are not
in the left bank to move around to the opposite side of the river, potentially allowing them to link up with that evacuation corridor. what is not clear at this stage of the game though is whether or not that includes these civilians who are trapped underneath that sprawling steel plant facility. and new satellite images show that is not a place anyone would want to be. images show that nearly every building on that sprawling campus has been destroyed. some roofs are caved in. some buildings have been reduced entirely to rubble. what the images do not show is the extent of the damage underground. i spoke yesterday with deputy commander of the azof regiment, part of the military that is leading the fighting in that area who said some parts of the cellars and bunkers and tunnels under the plant have been blocked off by rubble and there are some areas they can t access. they don t know if there are