At least 22,000 residents of the occupied city of Mariupol, Donetsk region, died during three months of the war, CNN writes citing the city's mayor's adviser Petro Andriuschenko.

Andriuschenko said the 22,000 figure is based on the many contacts he and other city hall officials continue to have with officials left in the city. But he believes the real figure could be much higher.

Andriushchenko said that the process of reburying the dead has been complicated by Russian official insistence that reclaimed bodies be brought to a morgue and that a person claiming a body must agree to record a video in which the applicant says the deceased was killed by the Ukrainian military. 

The mayor's adviser said his contacts paint a picture of a city in the grip of a humanitarian disaster, with very little contact with the outside world. Mobile communications are just beginning to recover. Residents cannot move freely, as special permits are needed for any movement in the city, and the filtration system does not allow them to flee.

As reported, at the end of April, mayor of Mariupol Vadym Boichenko stated that more than 20,000 residents had died in Mariupol since the beginning of the full-scale offensive of the Russian invaders.