Russian troops hold patients and hospital staff hostage in Mariupol: Human rights group

Russian troops are holding patients and staff at the Mariupol Regional Intensive Care Hospital hostage, residents of the barraged Ukrainian city have reportedly informed a human rights group.

The Media Initiative for Human Rights in Ukraine said residents of Mariupol have contacted its hotline to report the Russian occupation of the hospital.

"Hospital staff and patients are held hostage," the organization posted Tuesday on Facebook.

The human rights group reports that Ukrainian forces are taking fire from the hospital's windows.

Russian troops have threatened to shoot anyone who tries to leave, the organization stated.

"The Media Initiative for Human Rights calls on the international community to take all possible measures to stop the Russian Federation war crime, which is happening just at this moment, and to release doctors, patients, civilians" being used as a "living shield," the group said.

Later that day, the Russian Ministry of Defense took to Twitter to accuse Ukrainian forces of holding Mariupol residents hostage and using them as human shields.

Ukrainian journalist Anastasia Magazova, who works with the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, first reported that residents and staff were in Russian custody.

She said that "those patients who risked escaping returned with bullet wounds."

Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kirilenko also confirmed that Russian troops were holding people in the hospital hostage.

"The destruction was not enough for Russian villains – now they made people hostages," he wrote.

"I appeal to international human rights organizations to respond to these vicious violations of the norms and customs of war, to these blatant crimes against humanity," the governor added.

The port city of Mariupol has been the site of intense shelling during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia last week denied responsibility for an airstrike that hit a Mariupol maternity hospital, killing three people, including a child, and injuring 17 others.