Zelensky says aid to Mariupol blocked by Russian attacks

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says around 100,000 people had evacuated the country’s cities in two days, but accused Russian forces of targeting a humanitarian corridor in the city of Mariupol.

Zelensky says he decided to send a convoy of trucks into the besieged port city with food, water and medicine.

But “the occupiers launched a tank attack exactly where this corridor was supposed to be”, he said in a video statement, describing it as “outright terror.”

“They have a clear order to hold Mariupol hostage, to mock it, to constantly bomb and shell it,” Zelensky says in his nightly video address to the nation.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk says no evacuations from the beleaguered city were possible.

Ukraine has accused Russia of carrying out an air strike on Wednesday on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, a strategic port on the Azov Sea, killing three people, including a young girl.

Moscow is promising to open humanitarian corridors every day to allow Ukrainians to flee onto its soil, but Kyiv has previously rejected evacuation routes leading into Russia.