Russian state media and a Ukrainian soldier say several people have been evacuated from a steel plant in the pulverised city of Mariupol, including women and children.
Russia’s RIA Novosti reported on Saturday that 25 civilians had been brought out from the Azovstal steelworks, the last Ukrainian stronghold in the bombed out ruins of Mariupol.
They are the first group to leave since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the vast industrial area sealed off last week. Talks are ongoing about freeing the reported 1,000 civilians still trapped inside.
Russia is meanwhile said to be stepping up its offensive in the east.
More than a week ago, after saying Mariupol had been captured, President Putin told his troops: "Block off this industrial area so that a fly cannot not pass through."
The United Nations was working to broker an evacuation of the up to 1,000 civilians living beneath the sprawling Soviet-era Azovstal plant after numerous previous attempts failed.
Ukraine has not said how many fighters are also in the plant, the only part of Mariupol not occupied by Russian forces, but Russia put the number at about 2,000. An estimated 100,000 civilians remain in the city.
Russian forces have embarked on a major military operation to seize significant parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, the country’s industrial heartland. Ukrainian forces fought village by village Saturday to hold back the Russian advance.
Mariupol's mayor, Vadym Boychenko, told the BBC that people there were "on the borderline between life and death".
"[People] are waiting, they are praying for a rescue… It's difficult to say how many days or hours we have to save their lives."
Video and images from inside the plant, shared with The Associated Press by two Ukrainian women who said their husbands are among the fighters refusing to surrender there, showed unidentified men with stained bandages; others had open wounds or amputated limbs.
A skeleton medical staff was treating at least 600 wounded people, said the women, who identified their husbands as members of the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard. Some of the wounds were rotting with gangrene, they said.
In the video the men said that they eat just once daily and share as little as 1.5 liters (50 ounces) of water a day among four people, and that supplies inside the besieged facility are depleted.
One shirtless man appeared to be in pain as he described his wounds: two broken ribs, a punctured lung and a dislocated arm that “was hanging on the flesh.”
“I want to tell everyone who sees this: If you will not stop this here, in Ukraine, it will go further, to Europe,” he said.
The AP could not independently verify the date and location of the video, which the women said was taken in the last week in the maze of corridors and bunkers beneath the plant.
The women urged that Ukrainian fighters also be evacuated alongside civilians, warning they could be tortured and executed if captured. “The lives of soldiers matter, too,” Yuliia Fedusiuk told the AP in Rome.
Taking Mariupol would aid Moscow's plans to seize the entire south coast of Ukraine, which would unite pro-Russia separatist regions such as Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine with Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. It would also increase access to the pro-Russia Transnistria area across Ukraine's western border in Moldova.
On Saturday, three loud explosions were heard in the south-west port city Odesa, which officials said destroyed the runway of the airport rendering it unusable.
A Ukrainian Defence Ministry spokesperson, Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, said Russian troops "are gradually increasing the intensity of their offensive in eastern Ukraine simultaneously along all directions".
Moscow withdrew its troops from regions around the capital, Kyiv, weeks ago to redeploy them to the east of Ukraine.
"There are signs that the aggressor is preparing for an even bigger activation of military actions," Col Motuzyanyk said.
Western officials have said Moscow is facing significant challenges in the east.
The UK Ministry of Defence said Russia has been "forced to merge and redeploy depleted and disparate units from the failed advances" and "many of these units are likely suffering from weakened morale". That echoed statements by US officials overnight that Russia was "at least several days behind where they wanted to be".
