Maternity hospital in Mariupol heavily damaged in Russian attack, Ukrainian officials say

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A Russian attack severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, as citizens trying to escape shelling on the outskirts of Kyiv streamed toward the capital amid warnings from the West that Moscow's invasion is about to take a more brutal and indiscriminate turn.

President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Twitter that there were "people, children under the wreckage" of the hospital and called the strike an "atrocity." Authorities said they were trying to establish how many people had been killed or wounded.

Video shared by Zelensky showed cheerfully painted hallways strewn with twisted metal and room after room with blown-out windows. Floors were covered in wreckage. Outside, a small fire burned, and debris covered the ground.

Outside, mangled cars burned and heavy damage could be seen on at least three two-story buildings in a video provided by the Mariupol city council. Much of the front of one building had been ripped away. The council said the damage was "colossal."

"There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenceless," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be held "to account for his terrible crimes."

Authorities announced the new ceasefire on Wednesday to allow civilians to escape from towns around the capital, Kyiv, as well as the southern cities of Mariupol, Enerhodar and Volnovakha, Izyum in the east, and Sumy in the northeast. 

Previous attempts to establish safe evacuation corridors have largely failed due to attacks by Russian forces. But Putin, in a telephone call with Germany's chancellor, accused militant Ukrainian nationalists of hampering the evacuations.

One evacuation did appear successful, with Ukrainian authorities saying Tuesday that 5,000 civilians, including 1,700 foreign students, managed to escape from Sumy, a city of a quarter-million people that has seen intense shelling.

It was not immediately clear on Wednesday whether anyone was able to leave other cities, but people streamed out of Kyiv's suburbs, many headed for the city centre, even as explosions were heard in the capital and air-raid sirens sounded repeatedly. From there, they planned to board trains bound for western Ukrainian regions not under attack.

Civilians trying to escape the Kyiv suburb of Irpin were forced to make their way across the slippery wooden planks of a makeshift bridge. The Ukrainians blew up the concrete span to Kyiv days ago to slow the Russian advance.

With sporadic gunfire echoing behind them, firefighters dragged an elderly man to safety in a wheelbarrow, a child gripped the hand of a helping soldier and a woman inched her way along, cradling a fluffy cat inside her winter coat. On the far side of the bridge, they all trudged past a crashed van with the words "Our Ukraine" written in the dust coating its windows.

"We have a short window of time at the moment," said Yevhen Nyshchuk, a member of Ukraine's territorial defence forces. "Even if there is a ceasefire right now, there is a high risk of shells falling at any moment."

Across the country, thousands of people are thought to have been killed, both civilians and soldiers, in nearly two weeks of fighting since President Vladimir Putin's forces invaded.