Russian tank attacks Mariupol apartments as new satellite images show scale of devastation

Emblazoned with a Z symbol, a Russian tank has been recorded firing on residential apartment buildings in Mariupol, as new satellite imagery shows the devastation inflicted on the besieged port city.

A video recorded by an Associated Press journalist showed the tank firing on a nine-storey building, setting balconies on fire.

It was not possible to tell whether the Russian positions had first received fire from the targeted locations.

Mariupol has endured some of Ukraine’s worst punishment since Russia invaded.

Unceasing barrages have thwarted repeated attempts to bring food, water and medicine into the city of 430,000 and to evacuate its trapped civilians.

More than 1,500 people have died in Mariupol during the siege, according to the mayor's office, and the shelling has even interrupted efforts to bury the dead in mass graves.

Conditions in the hospital there 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, Ms 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.”

A staff member with Doctors Without Borders said conditions in the city were increasingly desperate.

"There is no drinking water and any medication for more than one week, maybe even 10 days without drinking water and medication," they said.

"The folks have to search for different sources of water from the ground, and they say that they were drinking after boiling because [there are] no other source of water. 

"We saw people who died because of lack of medication and there are a lot of such people inside Mariupol, and many people who were killed and injured and they're just lying on the ground and neighbours just digging the hole in the ground and putting their bodies inside."

Elsewhere, the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy are also encircled under heavy Russian shelling, as its forces advance on the capital Kyiv.

Before and after photos show devastation

Meanwhile, new satellite images have revealed the scale of the devastation in the port city.

Images captured before Russia's invasion show cars on the roads, green parks and apartment buildings.

Images taken yesterday show ruined buildings, fires and smoke.

In a video message broadcast to European cities on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the families of the 79 children killed in the war “had been destroyed,’’ and pleaded for help from Europe so that the number did not grow.

“They are bombing it [Mariupol] 24 hours a day... launching missiles,’’ he said, recalling the destruction this week of a maternity hospital in the city.

“It is hatred. They kill children. They destroy maternity hospitals. They destroy hospitals, why? So Ukraine has no more children.

“This is happening in all of our country. They have destroyed dozens of hospitals, hundreds of schools and daycares, they are destroying universities, they are destroying residential quarters."

Mr Zelenskyy again deplored NATO’s refusal to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and said Ukraine has sought ways to procure air defence assets, though he did not elaborate.

US President Joe Biden announced another $US200 million in aid to Ukraine, with an additional $US13 billion included in a bill that has passed the House and should pass the Senate within days.

NATO has said that imposing a no-fly zone could lead to a wider war with Russia.

ABC/AP