Stricken Mariupol ’s war-battered streets are littered with corpses and locals have been forced to dig a mass grave whilst under fire.
As many as 1,200 have died during a brutal nine-day siege leaving more than 200,000 running out of water and food, desperate for evacuation.
Grim images have emerged of a 25 metres long long trench being filled with bodies, wrapped in carpets and sacking.
Officials try to dignify the appalling scenes by making the sign of the cross before the remains of friends and neighbours, even relatives are pushed into the hole.
Today Russian shelling of the key port city - scene of the barbaric bombing of a hospital’s maternity ward - again smashed hopes of civilians evacuating.
A window for 200,000 trapped civilians to start fleeing in a humanitarian convoy was smashed by artillery a day after two adults and a child were killed in the city medical centre.
Residents have been cowering under fire, and without power, water or food in the Black Sea port city for days whilst repeated ceasefires” were broken by Russian forces.
Mariupol is reeling from the Wednesday horror bombing of the hospital which wounded 18 and amongst the three dead, killed a six year-old girl, sparking global disgust.
There are escalating fears Vladimir Putin will order commanders to become more ruthless after he sacked eight generals and is said to be furious with his FSB spy agency.
Enraged Putin is said to be angry with the FSB for wrongly advising him that Ukraine was weak and ripe for attack- as his military campaign is proving a disaster.
Devastating imagery of Moscow’s tanks has also emerged - with five vehicles being targeted as they are ambushed by Ukraine’s defiant anti-tank teams.
It is possible some of the tanks were targeted by drones on the outskirts of Brovary, in the Kyiv region this morning, their crews obliterated.
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Another of Putin’s tanks was left abandoned and in flames in the area as his troops pushed on towards the capital, the latest among hundreds of tanks destroyed.
Now it is feared Moscow’s troops are increasingly turning on civilian targets to try and force Ukraine’s troops to stop fighting.
Petro Andrushenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor said Russian aircraft were targeting routes that humanitarian aid was trying to use to enter the city, and along evacuation routes.
He said: “We try and try and try, but I’m not sure if it’ll be possible today - or other days.
“Airstrikes started from the early morning. Airstrike after airstrike. All the historic centre is under bombardment.”
The bombardment, he said, had continued “without any gaps, without any pause”, hitting houses and buildings.
He added: “They want to absolutely delete our city, delete our people. They want to stop any evacuation.”
Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Russia was deliberately preventing the evacuation of civilians because it had failed to seize the key port city.
Zelenskiy accused Russia of carrying out genocide after officials said Russian aircraft had bombed the hospital in Mariupol, burying patients in rubble and breaking a ceasefire deal.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Moscow would look into the incident. Other Russian officials rejected what they said was “fake news, with one saying the hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian troops.
But Zelenskiy said in a televised address: “Like always, they lie confidently.”
The Wednesday attack wounded 17 people, including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the rubble.
Bombs also fell on two hospitals in another city west of the capital.
Ukraine’s health minister Viktor Lyashko said Russia has already fired on 63 hospitals in his country, killing five doctors and seriously injuring over ten.
In Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 to the west of Kyiv, bombs fell on two hospitals, one of them a children’s hospital, mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said on Facebook.
Some lightly wounded medical experts had struggled to return to their duties he said.
Today it emerged the ground shook more than a mile away when a series of blasts hit the medical facility in Mariupol.
Explosions blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building.
Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victims, carrying a bleeding woman with a swollen belly on a stretcher past burning and mangled cars.
Another woman wailed as she clutched her child. In the courtyard, a blast crater extended at least two floors deep.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under debris.
Mr Zelensky has urged the West to impose even tougher sanctions in Russia.
Britain’s armed forces minister, James Heappey, said the strike “is a war crime” regardless of whether it was deliberate.
Two weeks into Russia’s assault on Ukraine, its military is struggling after suffering well-over 12,000 deaths among its 150,000-strong attack force.
Increasingly Russian forces appear to be falling back on superior artillery and air power with more deadly weapons coming into Ukraine, such as its thermobaric missile systems.
Russian progress has faltered against the cities of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv, in heavy fighting.
