'We are being destroyed,' city council of Ukraine's Mariupol says

Mariupol city council said Russian forces were constantly and deliberately shelling vital civilian infrastructure in the southeastern Ukrainian port, leaving it without water, heating or power and preventing bringing supplies or evacuating people.

"They are breaking food supplies, setting us up in a blockade, as in the old Leningrad," it said in a statement, referring to Nazi Germany's protracted siege of the then-Soviet city now known as St. Petersburg during World War Two. Around 1.5 million people died in the more than two-year-long siege.

"Deliberately, for seven days, they have been destroying (Mariupol's) critical life-support infrastructure. We have no light, water or heat again," the council said.

It added that it was seeking to create a humanitarian corridor for Mariupol, as well as trying to restore infrastructure.

"Mariupol remains under fire. Women, children and the elderly are suffering. We are being destroyed as a nation. This is genocide of the Ukrainian people," it said.