Near Ukraine's capital, Russia strikes; a mosque is said to have been hit.

The Ukrainian government claims that Russia's troops bombarded a mosque in Mariupol, which was sheltering more than 80 people. 

LVIV (Ukraine) – Russian military attacked a mosque sheltering more than 80 people, including children, in Mariupol, the Ukrainian authorities said Saturday. On the fringes of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, fighting raged while Russia's growing invasion razed other resistant cities.

There was no early news on the number of people killed or injured as a result of the bombardment of Mariupol's exquisite city-center mosque. Unrelenting barrages have thwarted numerous attempts to bring in food and water, evacuate besieged populations, and bury all of the dead in the ringed city of 446,000 people.

An Associated Press correspondent was with a group of hospital workers who came under sniper fire on Friday and observed tanks firing on a 9-story residential building in the city. Although a worker who was shot in the hip survived, the hospital's conditions were deteriorating: electricity was only available for operating tables, and patients with nowhere else to go lined the hallways.

Anastasiya Erashova, who was weeping and trembling as she clutched a sleeping kid, was one of them. Erashova replied, her scalp coated with blood, that shelling had just murdered her second child as well as her brother's child.

"We all went to my brother's (house) together. The ladies and children retreated underground, and then the structure was hit by mortar "she stated "Two children died as a result of our being trapped underneath. They were unable to be rescued by anyone."

Russian forces entered Mariupol's eastern suburbs on Saturday, Ukraine's military reported, tightening the armed siege on the important port. Taking Mariupol and other Azov Sea ports could allow Russia to open a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine urged his people to maintain their fight.

"The fact that the entire Ukrainian nation has stood up to these invaders has already gone down in history," he stated, "but we do not have the right to abandon our defense, no matter how difficult it may be."

With the alleged kidnapping of the mayor of Melitopol, a city 192 kilometers (119 miles) west of Mariupol, Zelenskyy accused Russia of utilizing "a new level of terror." Residents of the seized city demonstrated for the mayor's release on Saturday, prompting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to call on Russian soldiers to respond.

"Please let Moscow hear!" Saturday, Zelenskyy stated. "Another anti-Russian rally, this time against Russian troops attempting to bring the city to its knees."

Residents scurried for cover as artillery barrages sounded across the capital, and air raid sirens wailed. According to the British Defense Ministry, Russian ground forces stationed north of Kyiv for the majority of the battle have advanced to within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the city center and have dispersed out, indicating that an encirclement attempt is underway.

As artillery shelled Kyiv's northern outskirts, black and white columns of smoke billowed southwest of the capital, the result of an attack on an ammunition stockpile in Vasylkiv, which resulted in hundreds of tiny explosions. In an apparent attempt to target Kyiv's food supply, a frozen food storage close outside the capital was also hit.

Ukraine's military and volunteer forces are preparing for an all-out assault, which is feared. According to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, around 2 million people have fled the city, accounting about half of the city's population, and "every street, every house... is being secured."

Russia's gradual tightening of the noose around Kyiv and the bombardment of other population areas with artillery and air attacks reflect tactics used by Russian forces in earlier operations to destroy armed resistance, most notably in Syria and Chechnya.

According to the Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey, 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children, sought refuge at Mariupol's Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roksolana mosque, which was modeled after one of Istanbul's most famous and largest mosques.

Mariupol touted the white-walled building and its high minaret as a beautiful feature before it became a target of Europe's largest land conflict since World War II. The mayor's administration said on Friday that the dead toll in Mariupol had surpassed 1,500 after 12 days of attacks.

Aid workers and Ukrainian authorities described a humanitarian disaster brewing in the encircled and shelled city as electricity, gas, and water supplies were cut off. Residents are dying due to a lack of medication and the draining of heating pipes for drinking water, according to the charity organization Doctors Without Borders.

According to the World Health Organization, Russian soldiers have attacked at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24. A cancer hospital and numerous residential structures in Mykolaiv, a city 489 kilometers (304 miles) west of Mariupol, were hit by heavy artillery on Saturday, according to Ukrainian officials.

Several hundred patients were in the hospital at the time of the attack, according to Maksim Beznosenko, the institution's chief doctor.

Invaders from Russia have faced significantly greater resistance than expected from resolute Ukrainian defenders. According to Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian Interior Ministry consultant, a Russian general was killed in the battle for Mariupol on Saturday. Since the conflict began, Maj. Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov would be the third Russian general reported killed in battle.

The Russian military, which has kept a tight lid on information about its losses, has not verified Kolesnikov's death.

Despite a continued influx of weaponry and other help from the West for Ukraine's westward-looking, democratically elected government, Russia's stronger military threatens to grind down the defending forces.

A top Russian diplomat cautioned that Moscow could target military equipment shipments to Ukraine from other countries. Moscow has warned the US "that pouring weapons from a number of nations it orchestrates isn't just a dangerous move, it's an action that makes such convoys legal targets," according to Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

Russia's forces are likely to receive reinforcements from abroad in the near future. Denis Pushilin, the head of a separatist area in eastern Ukraine backed by Russia, said on Saturday that he expects "thousands" of warriors from the Middle East to join the insurgents and fight "shoulder-to-shoulder" with the Ukrainian army.

According to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Russian authorities have received requests from around 16,000 persons from the Middle East who want to join Russia's military activity in Ukraine. He went on to say that several of them had previously fought alongside Russia against the Islamic State.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides of the Ukraine conflict, as well as many civilians, are estimated to have died. According to the UN refugee agency, at least 2.5 million people have fled the nation.

Since the start of the war, at least 79 children have been killed and almost 100 have been injured, according to the Ukrainian top prosecutor's office. The majority of those killed were in the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson, and Zhytomyr.

As the violence continues, the UN is attempting to reach an agreement with Ukraine and Russia to construct assistance delivery routes in Ukraine. The United Nations' crisis coordinator for Ukraine, Amin Awad, told The Associated Press that progress was being made, but that he was frustrated by the slow pace of implementation.

Attempts to create escape routes from Mariupol in the past have failed due to the continued sheling. Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, is also being blockaded by Russian military. The bodies of five people - two women, a man, and two children - were removed from a Kharkiv apartment building hit by shelling on Saturday, according to Ukraine's rescue services.

The US and its allies have taken steps to further isolate and penalize the Kremlin on the economic and political fronts. President Joe Biden declared that the United States will drastically reduce its trading relationship with Russia, prohibiting the purchase of Russian seafood, wine, and diamonds.

The decision to suspend Russia's status as a "most favored nation" was made in consultation with the European Union and the Group of Seven countries.

Biden stated, "The free world is coming together to face Putin."

Felipe Dana and Andrew Drake of the Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, and other reporters from across the world contributed.

At https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine, you can follow the AP's coverage of the Ukraine situation.