Smashed buildings in Mariupol produce 'caravan of death'

BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AP) — The human cost of the war in Ukraine mounted as workers pulled up to 100 bodies from each smashed building in the devastated city of Mariupol — a gruesome effort that one official described as an “endless caravan of death.”

Meanwhile, fears of a global food crisis escalated over Ukraine’s inability to export millions of tons of grain through its blockaded ports.

At the same time, Ukrainian and Russian forces battled fiercely Wednesday for control of Sievierodonestk, a city that has emerged as central to Moscow's grinding campaign to capture Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, known as the Donbas.

Many buildings in Mariupol contain 50 to 100 bodies each, according to a mayoral aide in the Russian-held port city in the south.

Petro Andryushchenko said on the Telegram app that the bodies are being taken in an “endless caravan of death” to a morgue, landfills and other places. At least 21,000 Mariupol civilians were killed during the weeks-long Russian siege, Ukrainian authorities have estimated.

The consequences of the war are being felt far beyond Eastern Europe because shipments of Ukrainian grain are bottled up inside the country, driving up the price of food.

Ukraine, long known as the “bread basket of Europe,” is one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, but much of that flow has been halted by the war and a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. An estimated 22 million tons of grain remains in Ukraine. The failure to ship it out is endangering the food supply in many developing countries, especially in Africa.

Russia expressed support Wednesday for a U.N. plan to create a safe corridor at sea that would allow Ukraine to resume grain shipments. The plan, among other things, calls for Ukraine to remove...