Socio-Economics History Blog

Socio-Economics History Blog

Odessa Tragedy Survivor: ‘Many People Strangled After Escaping the Fire’!

by mosesman
People wait to be rescued on upper storeys at the trade union building in Odessa May 2, 2014. At least 38 people were killed in a fire on Friday in the trade union building in the centre of Ukraine's southern port city of Odessa, regional police said. REUTERS/Yevgeny Volokin
People wait to be rescued on upper storeys at the trade union building in Odessa May 2, 2014. At least 38 people were killed in a fire on Friday in the trade union building in the centre of Ukraine’s southern port city of Odessa, regional police said. REUTERS/Yevgeny Volokin
  • Odessa tragedy survivor: ‘Many people strangled after escaping the fire’! 
    by http://rt.com/ 
    Radicals set the building with innocent people inside on fire in Odessa, then strangled the survivors and finished them with bats, while police did nothing to prevent the bloodshed. That’s the scary picture a survivor of the massacre told RT.
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    “First of all, nobody expected such cruelty, and secondly, it was too late to escape,” Tatyana Ivananko told RT’s correspondent Alexey Yaroshevsky about the Odessa tragedy on May 2, after which at least 46 people died in flames, when radicals set ablaze the local House of Trade Unions with anti-government protesters trapped inside.
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    According to the witness, pro-autonomy activists wanted to hide from the radicals by barricading themselves in the building.
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    “On our way up the stairs, we were taking plywood sheets inside so that we could block the doors and prevent them from getting into the building,” she says.
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    However, the crowd of pro-government supporters who were trying to enter the building was quickly becoming bigger.
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    “They were coming from everywhere,” she added.
    According to Tatyana, the radicals started hurling Molotov cocktails, after which the first and the third floors of the House of Trade Unions burst into flames.
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    Tatyana also recalled that the outraged crowd outside was shouting that they wouldn’t let anybody out.
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    “They were also throwing firecrackers, so people in the halls were sitting on the floor, blinded.” She added, “At that moment you realize there is no way to help these people so you’d better rescue yourself.”
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    Public services such as police and fire brigade were not rushing to rescue the injured people.
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    “The police were idle not doing anything,” she recalls. “When firefighters arrived it was too late – too many people had already died, even though the closest fire station is 700 meters away from the site.”
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    According to the numerous videos released in the Internet, many victims of the Odessa massacre received bullet wounds. On some of the videos a man in a bulletproof vest who introduces himself as sotnik Mykola (“sotnik” is what Maidan group leaders in Kiev call themselves) is shooting several times in the direction of the burning House of Trade Unions.
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    read more!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAOXqsRAORg]

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