Displaced families from the besieged city of Mariupol in Ukraine's south have been trickling into Lviv in the west of the country with harrowing accounts of the situation they left behind.
Mariupol has been the scene of some of the war's worst suffering. Officials estimated 80 per cent of the city's homes have been destroyed or damaged.
Arriving in Lviv, Katya Valenkova sobbed as she recounted spending seven days in her basement, hiding from the bombs and the fighting that was getting closer and closer to the city centre.
She was without power for about 10 days, unable to even heat up soup for her toddler.
Worse still was what she saw when she did emerge.
"Horrible things," she said, shaking her head and wiping away tears.
Katya managed to get out with her daughter and her grandmother, the little girl's great grandmother, hitching a ride in someone's car.
The trio finally reached Zaporizhzhia, where they boarded a train for the more than 20-hour journey to relative safety in Ukraine's west, leaving behind her parents to an unknown fate.
Anna, another Mariupol resident arriving at Lviv train station, also left her parents behind.
"There was no phone connection, but my father managed to call me this morning," she said.
"He says they are still shooting."
Anna got out on foot with her son and a few belongings. She didn't know if she could ever return.
"I don't know what is going to happen — basically there is no Mariupol anymore."
Anna is waiting in Lviv, hoping some friends from Mariupol will arrive there too. Then they'll decide what next.
Mothers with young children who arrived at the station with nowhere to go could spend up to 24 hours in a mother and baby room.
There was bedding on the floor, warm food and nappies for the babies.
Volunteers work with local authorities to help them make it to Poland.
If they can't pay, the costs of the transportation will be covered for them.
Some found temporary accommodation in Lviv.
One man held a handwritten cardboard sign offering people a place to stay.
Within minutes, a small group of women and kids took him up on it.
The kids high-fived the volunteers as they strapped on the bags with all the belongings they had and headed off.
Satellite images show damage to a Mariupol theatre
Back in Mariupol, satellite images revealed the extent of damage to a drama theatre where hundreds of civilians had taken shelter.
Rescuers continued to search for hundreds of civilians feared trapped under the wreckage of the bombed Mariupol Drama Theatre on Saturday.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 130 people were rescued from a bomb shelter beneath the building, but hundreds more were believed to remain trapped under the rubble.
In a late night broadcast, Mr Zelenskyy said the siege of Mariupol would "go down in history of responsibility for war crimes".
Earlier, human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said there could be more than 1,300 people still trapped in the underground shelters.
On March 14, the words "дети" — or "children" in Russian — were photographed by satellites after being displayed on the ground on either side of the three-storey building.
On Saturday, new images showed most of the building collapsed, with the front of the building damaged but still standing.
Russia denied bombing residential areas or targeting civilians.
The fall of Mariupol would mark a major battlefield advance for the Russians, who are largely bogged down outside major cities more than three weeks into the biggest land invasion in Europe since World War II.
"Children, elderly people are dying," Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said from a rubble-strewn street in a video addressed to Western leaders.
Russian forces have already cut the city off from the Sea of Azov, and its fall would link Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, to territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in the east.
It would mark a rare advance in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance that has dashed Russia's hopes for a quick victory and galvanised the West.
'No safe places in the city anymore'
Mariupol resident Oleksandr Bezimov said when the area where he was sheltered in the basement with his family came under shelling, he realised it was time to go.
"When the artillery sound is non-stop, when planes fly over all night and bombard the city, it is very loud, it feels very nervous," he said from the city of Lviv, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are seeking refuge away from the frontline of the war.
Some 400,000 people have been trapped in Mariupol for more than two weeks, sheltering from heavy bombardment that has severed central supplies of electricity, heating and water, according to local authorities.
Satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed a long line of cars leaving Mariupol as people tried to evacuate.
Mr Zelenskyy said more than 9,000 people were able to leave Friday.
Together with his wife and stepdaughter, Bezimov, 57, escaped Mariupol on March 17. It took them two days to get to western Ukraine.
"The outskirts of the city were simply destroyed. And then I realised there were no safe places in the city anymore," he said.
On Saturday, Ukrainian and Russian forces battled over the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister, said.
"One of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe is actually being destroyed," Mr Denysenko said in televised remarks.
Russian forces have fired on eight cities and villages in the eastern Donetsk region in the past 24 hours, including Mariupol, Ukraine's national police said Saturday.
The attacks with rockets and heavy artillery killed and wounded dozens of civilians, and damaged at least 37 residential buildings and facilities, including a school, a museum and a shopping centre, it said.
ABC/wires
