AP PHOTOS: Day 16: New life arrives; residents flee or hide

A giant fireball exploding from the side of an apartment building in the hard-hit port of Mariupol was just one of the many disturbing signs of ongoing Russian attacks in Ukraine on Friday.

The unceasing violence in cities throughout Ukraine prompted yet more residents to join the 2.5 million who are estimated to already have left the country. In the besieged town of Irpin, a suburb of the capital of Kyiv, two men held tight to the arms of an elderly woman fleeing her home Friday. Wearing a white headscarf with orange and yellow flowers and a flowered blue skirt that was visible under her brown winter coat, she edged forward slowly past an overturned car and destroyed bridge, wielding a cane in her right hand.

Some Ukrainians have either decided to stay put or haven’t yet been able to leave. One such elderly woman took shelter in a basement of a home in Irpin that had no heat or running water. She sat on the edge of a bed bundled in a big winter coat and stared out forlornly through the opening of a large gray, woolen scarf wrapped around her head.

In another basement-turned shelter, a man wearing a blue down coat and winter wool hat bided his time on his cellphone as he lay on a bench next to a table covered with first-aid medicines, tissues and empty paper cups.