A large number of Mariupol civilians, including infants, are hiding from shelling by Russian invaders in a shelter on the territory of Azovstal plant, head of the city's patrol police Mykhailo Vershynin said.

"There are indeed a large number of civilians on the territory of the Azovstal plant, including women, children, the elderly and infants. These people hid from shelling, because there is a shelter here that allows them to survive the shelling for some time," he said in a comment to Mariupol television on Sunday.

Vershynin said that local residents do not trust the Russian occupiers because they "see what is happening in the city" and therefore remain at the plant.

According to him, the Russians use the local population, of which there are about 100,000 people left in the city: "for food, they dig up rubble, collect corpses and make mass graves, that is [Russians] simply clean up the traces of their activities after shelling."

In addition, Vershynin noted that the Russian invaders are forcing the Mariupol residents to put on a white bandage on their right leg and left arm, passing them off as combatants on their part.

"All the military of the enemy, that is, the Russian Federation and the so-called 'DNR', have exactly the same markings. Accordingly, they introduce the local population into the rank of combatants, marking them in this way, and then they specially send these people to the points where there is fire contact between parties and these people may die, that is, this is confirmed information: it takes place and it takes place constantly," the head of the patrol police of Mariupol said.