Refugee numbers pass two million as attacks on Ukrainian hospitals increase rapidly

A man walks between houses destroyed during airstrikes on the central Ukrainian city of Bila Tserkva on March 8. (Photo by ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images)

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Attacks on hospitals, ambulances and other health care facilities in Ukraine have increased rapidly in recent days and the country is running short of vital medical supplies, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

The Russian onslaught has trapped people inside besieged cities that are running low on food, water and medicine amid the biggest ground war in Europe since the Second World War.

The UN agency confirmed on Monday that at least nine people had died in 16 attacks on health care facilities since the start of a Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. It did not say who was responsible.

The WHO's senior emergency officer for Europe, Catherine Smallwood, told a news briefing that the tally included incidents where ambulances had been commandeered for purposes other than emergency healthcare.

"We will continue to update those numbers. They've been increasing quite rapidly over the past few days," Smallwood said.

It comes as UN officials report that two million people have now fled Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday a child had died from dehydration in Ukraine's besieged city of Mariupol, which has had no water, power or heating supplies for days.

Displaced Ukrainians queue to board a bus to Poland (Bernat Armangue/AP)

Buses carried civilians out of one embattled Ukrainian city on Tuesday and supplies toward another, as officials tried to move people away from a Russian onslaught and ease the dire humanitarian situation for those still stuck. 

But reports of renewed Russian attacks on the port of Mariupol threatened to again derail the efforts.

Significant advances 

With the invasion well into its second week, Russian troops have made significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions.

Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers fortified the capital Kyiv with hundreds of checkpoints and barricades designed to thwart a takeover.

A steady rain of shells and rockets fell on other population centres, including the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where the mayor reported heavy artillery fire.

Refugees on a bus from the Mariupol area (AP)

“We can’t even gather up the bodies because the shelling from heavy weapons doesn’t stop day or night,” Anatol Fedoruk said. 

Dogs are pulling apart the bodies on the city streets. It’s a nightmare.

In Mariupol, an estimated 200,000 people — nearly half the population of 430,000 — hoped to flee.

Russia’s coordination centre for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine and Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk both said a ceasefire had been agreed to start on Tuesday morning to allow some civilians to leave.

(PA Graphics)

Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko posted a video of yellow buses with a red cross on the side that he said showed evacuations from Mariupol toward the city of Zaporizhzhia. He said that humanitarian aid was also being sent to Mariupol.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine’s foreign ministry accused Russia of violating a ceasefire, by shelling the humanitarian corridor from Zaporizhzhia to the besieged city of Mariupol.

The battle for Mariupol is crucial because its capture could allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Demands for effective passageways surged amid intensifying shelling by Russian forces. The steady bombardments, including in some of Ukraine’s most populated regions, have yielded a humanitarian crisis of diminishing food, water and medical supplies.

'For one soldier of Ukraine, we have 10 Russian soldiers'

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces were showing unprecedented courage.

“The problem is that for one soldier of Ukraine, we have 10 Russian soldiers, and for one Ukrainian tank, we have 50 Russian tanks,” he told ABC News in an interview that aired on Monday night. But he noted that the gap in strength was closing and that even if Russian forces “come into all our cities”, they will be met with an insurgency.

A senior US official said multiple countries were discussing whether to provide the warplanes Mr Zelenskyy has been pleading for.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/AP)

Several hundred miles west of Mariupol, Russian forces continued their offensive in Mykolaiv, opening fire on the Black Sea shipbuilding centre of half a million people, according to Ukraine’s military. Rescuers said they were putting out fires caused by rocket attacks in residential areas.

Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces said in a statement that Ukrainian forces are continuing defence operations in the suburbs of the city.

Ukrainian defence forces were also involved in operations in the northern city of Chernihiv and the outskirts of Kyiv, the general staff said.

In Kyiv, soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints to protect the city of nearly four million, often using sandbags, stacked tyres and spiked cables.

Some barricades looked significant, with heavy concrete slabs and sandbags piled more than two storeys high, while others appeared more haphazard, with hundreds of books used to weigh down stacks of tyres.

“Every house, every street, every checkpoint, we will fight to the death if necessary,” said Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko.