(14 Mar 2022) Air raid sirens sent people running for shelter in the besieged city of Mariupol in Ukraine's south on Sunday as the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had advanced 11 kilometers (7 miles) and reached five towns north of the port-city.
Ukraine has denied the claims saying Moscow's troops failed to make major advances over the past 24 hours.
As the bombardment continued targeting residential areas in the city on the Azov Sea, some broke down in tears.
"Daddy, I can't bear it anymore," cried out Mariupol resident, Natalia Koldash as she huddled with a group of people hiding in the hallway of a building.
Russian artillery hit a residential building that caught fire on Sunday.
The surrounded city, where the war has produced some of the greatest human suffering, remained cut off despite earlier talks on creating aid or evacuation convoys.
A new round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials has raised hopes that progress would be made in evacuating civilians from besieged Ukrainian cities and getting emergency supplies to areas without enough food, water and medicine.
Air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns all around the country overnight, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, as fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital, a major political and strategic target for an invasion in its 19th day.
Ukrainian authorities said two people died and seven were injured after Russian forces struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire.
The Antonov factory is Ukraine's largest aircraft manufacturing plant and is best known for producing many of the world's biggest cargo planes.
Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in a northern district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said.
Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.
While Russia's military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraine's, Russian troops have faced stiffer than expected resistance, bolstered by Western weapons support that has frustrated Russian President Vladimir Putin.
With their advance slowed in several areas, they have bombarded several cities with unrelenting shelling, hitting two dozen medical facilities and creating a series of humanitarian crises.
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