Russia strikes near Ukraine’s capital, mosque reported hit

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) —
Russian forces pounding the port city of Mariupol shelled a mosque sheltering more than 80 people, including children, the Ukrainian government said Saturday. 

Fighting also raged on the outskirts of Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, as Russia's expanding invasion bombarded other resisting cities into rubble.

There was no immediate word of casualties from the shelling of Mariupol's elegant, city-centre mosque.

The encircled city of 446,000 people has suffered some of the greatest misery from Russia's war in Ukraine, with unceasing barrages thwarting repeated attempts to bring in food and water, evacuate trapped civilians and to bury all of the dead.

An Associated Press journalist witnessed tanks firing on a nine-storey apartment building in the city and was with a group of hospital workers who came under sniper fire on Friday.

A worker shot in the hip survived, but conditions in the hospital were deteriorating: electricity was reserved for operating tables, and people with nowhere else to go lined the hallways.

Among them was Anastasiya Erashova, who wept and trembled as she held a sleeping child.

Shelling had just killed her other child as well as her brother's child, Erashova said, her scalp crusted with blood.

“We came to my brother's (place), all of us together. The women and children went underground, and then some mortar struck that building,” she said.

“We were trapped underground, and two children died. No one was able to save them.”

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