Russian forces dropped two “super powerful bombs” in Mariupol on Tuesday as local authorities made a fresh attempt to rescue civilians from the besieged Ukrainian port city that has suffered relentless shelling since Moscow’s invasion began about a month ago.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there was “nothing left” of the strategic city amid Kyiv’s appeal to Moscow to allow the evacuation of at least 1,00,000 people who want to leave.

“There is nothing left there. Only ruins,” Zelenskyy said of Mariupol, which has a peacetime population of 4,00,000, in a video address to the Italian parliament.

As he was speaking, the city council said Russian forces had dropped two large bombs on Mariupol but gave no details of casualties or damage.

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In a video address, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, “We know that there will not be enough space for everyone, but we will try to carry out the evacuation until we have gotten all the inhabitants of Mariupol out.”

“It is clear that the occupiers are not interested in the city of Mariupol, they want to raze it to the ground, to reduce it to ashes,” the authorities said.

The battle for Ukraine’s cities continued across its suburbs during the day, with the Ukrainian military forcing Russian troops out of a strategically important Kyiv neighborhood, while Russian forces took partial control of three northwest suburbs where there’s been fighting for weeks.

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Here are some other top updates of the war that was in its fourth week, leaving hundreds dead, thousands injured and prompting one of the worst refugee crisis Europe has ever seen since the Second World War.

– The United Nations said more than 3.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, while millions more have been displaced within the country.

– Zelenskyy turned to Pope Francis for help, urging the pontiff to mediate in the conflict and to help end “human suffering”.

– UN chief Antonio Guterres described the war as “unwinnable” for Russia. “For more than two weeks, Mariupol has been encircled by the Russian army and relentlessly bombed, shelled and attacked. For what?” he tells reporters in New York.

– Earlier, Zelenskyy said all issues would be on the table if Russia’s Vladimir Putin agreed to direct talks to end the war, including the contested eastern regions Donbas and the annexed Crimea peninsula. But he warned his country would be “destroyed” before it surrenders.

– The Kremlin said it would like to see negotiations with Kyiv to be “more active and substantial”.

– A Ukrainian photojournalist has gone missing in a combat zone near the capital, raising fears he could have been injured, killed or taken captive by Russian forces. The UNIAN news agency said Maksym Levin has been unaccounted since March 13 when he contacted his friend from Vyshhorod near Kyiv.

– A senior defence official of the United States said there was no concrete indications yet of an imminent Russian chemical or biological weapons attack in Ukraine but is closely monitoring streams of intelligence for them. His statement came in response to US President Joe Biden saying Russia’s false accusations that Kyiv has biological and chemical weapons illustrated that Putin is considering using them himself in the war against Ukraine.

– A Ukrainian serviceman was killed in drone strikes on a scientific institute in northwest Kyiv, AFP journalists at the scene said. The attack on the Institute for Superhard Materials came a day after at least eight people were killed in the bombing of a shopping centre. The capital is under curfew until Wednesday morning.

(With agency inputs)