March 6, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

There has been heavy shelling to the west and north-west of Kyiv on Sunday morning. The impact of explosions was heard by CNN teams in Kyiv and in rural areas to the south-west.

Two mortar or artillery shells hit a checkpoint for civilians to cross into Kyiv from the suburb of Irpin. Three people were reported killed, say Ukrainian authorities, including two children.

Social media video showed extensive destruction in Irpin, which is just northwest of Kyiv, on Sunday.

Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser in the Ukrainian President's Office said: "They [Russian troops] captured Hostomel and Bucha yesterday (Saturday).The Russians entered there.

"They have injured many children and do not allow to evacuate them, despite numerous appeals at the highest state level to provide a "green corridor" from Bucha and Irpin. There are many children in the basements.”

“There are basements where 70 children are sitting now and they are not being released. This is a catastrophe both from the humanitarian and, above all, from the moral point of view," Arestovych said, adding that the issue was being discussed "at the highest level with international humanitarian institutions."

Several children have died, according to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

A maternity hospital not far from the front lines in Kyiv has become a clinic treating wounded soldiers and people injured in Russian strikes.

The head of the hospital, who asked for his name and the name of the facility to remain private over security fears, said many of his staff are now essentially living in the hospital — some with their families — and working around the clock trying to help victims.

"Currently, we have no maternity patients, but we have a lot of wounded local citizens and soldiers. Local people come to us when they need help with food and medicine, and we provide all urgent health care. The numbers are going up and people come 24/7,” he said. The hospital head added that that patients including women have been coming in with serious injuries in recent days.

For now, he said, the hospital is coping, despite normally specializing in maternity care.“We are well equipped for now, but the problem is that the number of people who are coming to us is increasing, and it's really a lot of people with serious injuries and we don't have enough staff if the numbers keep going up.”

He said the hospital is trying to secure equipment and materials that are intended for treating serious military wounds, something the hospital doesn’t normally stock in larger quantities.

At the same time, the hospital continues serving its core patients. 20 babies have been born here since the invasion started 10 days ago — all of them safe and healthy.

“They all went either home or traveled to western Ukraine,” the hospital’s chief said.

A district to the northwest of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv has issued an urgent appeal for help amid intense shelling by Russian forces.

The district of Bucha has been at the center of fighting for more than a week.

"The enemy continues to shell all quarters in Bucha mercilessly: every day is the struggle for survival," the city council said on Facebook Sunday.

"There is no electricity, heat, communication, internet," it said.

Every day we receive thousands of messages from the residents of Bucha and settlements of the community about the need for food, water, restoration of communications."

Videos from the area in recent days show extensive damage and the wreckage of military vehicles.

More than 1.5 million refugees from Ukraine have crossed into neighboring countries in 10 days, UN refugee agency commissioner Filippo Grandi said Sunday.

In a Twitter post, Grandi called it "the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II."

Meanwhile, Germany's interior ministry told CNN that nearly 38,000 people have arrived in the country from Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24.

German Federal Police registered 37,786 refugees from the war-torn nation as of Sunday, an interior ministry spokesperson told CNN.

However, given the absence of border checks between Poland and Germany, the actual number of incoming people could be significantly higher, the ministry said.

Germany's interior minister Nancy Faeser told German newspaper "Bild am Sonntag" that Germany would host refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine no matter what their nationality.

A boy from Zaporizhzhia, southeast Ukraine, was hailed “a hero of the night” by Slovakian authorities after they said he crossed Ukraine's border into Slovakia on his own.

The 11-year-old was carrying a backpack, a plastic bag and a passport, and had a telephone number written on his hand, according to the Slovak Ministry of Interior. CNN could not independently verify those statements.

The statement, posted on the ministry’s Facebook page Saturday, said that thanks to the information written on the boy’s hand and on a piece of paper that was folded in his passport, the staff at the border were able to get in touch with the boy’s relatives in Slovakia who were then able to come and collect him.

“He won over everyone with his smile, fearlessness and determination worthy of a real hero,” the statement said. It is unclear why the boy was unaccompanied.

CNN could not independently verify this individual case but more than 1.2 million refugees have now left Ukraine since February 24, according to the UN as of March 3. Of the 1,209,976 refugees who have fled, a majority of them, 53.7%, crossed into Poland.

Others have gone to countries including Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova and Romania.

An evacuation crossing point for civilians trying to escape the Irpin district west of Kyiv was shelled Sunday morning.

International media were filming at the location when what appears to have been an artillery shell landed.

At the time a stream of civilians was coming through the checkpoint.

Media organizations at the scene of the explosion near Irpin say at least three civilians have been killed, including two children.

CNN cannot independently confirm the casualties.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed "several attacks on health care [centers] in Ukraine, causing multiple deaths and injuries," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday.

"Additional reports are being investigated," Tedros said on his verified Twitter account, without mentioning Russia. "Attacks on healthcare facilities or workers breach medical neutrality and are violations of international humanitarian law," he added.

So far, the WHO has confirmed six attacks to health care facilities, the head of the WHO office in Ukraine, Jarno Habicht, told the BBC on Sunday.

What is important is to "respect the humanitarian law as well to ensure safe corridors because the health needs of people are increasing daily and every hour, and it's very, very important to ensure that there is a safe passage of trauma and surgery goods," he added.

Habicht also said the work of health care workers is increasingly difficult due to the military offensive, with many of them now working in bomb shelters.

Habicht described the situation as "quite devastating," since the health care system is already "relatively stretched" and facing multiple health challenges, including Covid-19.

Humanitarian corridors in the southeastern Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha will be opened again today, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

Some skepticism over the routes has grown after Ukrainian authorities paused evacuations of civilians Saturday, citing Russian violations of a ceasefire.

"In the morning, humanitarian corridors will again be opened both in Mariupol and Volnovakha," Eduard Basurin, deputy head of the so-called People's Militia of the Donetsk People's Republic told reporters, TASS reported.

Civilians in the battered Ukrainian port city of Mariupol are trapped without power and water and unable to recover their dead, its mayor said Saturday, as he accused Russia of trying to "choke" the city by shutting off agreed evacuation routes.

Russia agreed to a ceasefire on Saturday to allow civilians to safely leave Mariupol and Volnovakha, where residents have endured days of heavy, indiscriminate shelling.

But evacuations were paused, with Ukrainian authorities accusing Russia of violating the agreement by resuming its attacks, leaving thousands of civilians trapped in what people on the ground describe as increasingly dire conditions.

Another attempt to open a humanitarian corridor for civilians in the city of Mariupol will begin at 12 p.m. local (5 a.m. ET), the Governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said Sunday on his official Twitter account.

A ceasefire will be in effect from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. local time Sunday, Kyrylenko said.

Hundreds of people gathered in Taiwan's capital, Taipei, on Sunday to protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Among the demonstrators were Ukrainians living in Taiwan and Taiwanese lawmakers. They waved Ukraine and Taiwan flags, and held placards reading "no war" and "Taiwan stands with Ukraine."

Anatolii Bakurov, a Ukrainian who has lived in Taiwan for 10 years, said while some people often compared Taiwan with Ukraine, he is more optimistic about the future of Taiwan.

The protest was held at Liberty Square, a gathering ground in Taipei that played a key role in Taiwan’s transition from one-party rule to a democracy in the 1990s.

Some context: Taiwan has pledged its support for Ukraine, recently announcing it would donate 27 tons of medical supplies to the country. While there may be parallels between Taiwan and Ukraine — both are Western-friendly democracies whose status quo could be upended by powerful autocracies — experts question how much Beijing could glean from the spiraling crisis in Ukraine when it comes any future actions toward Taiwan.

In Taiwan’s case, China’s Communist Party seeks eventual “reunification” with the self-ruled island it claims as its territory despite having never governed it — and has not ruled out doing so by force.