By CARA ANNA and INNA VARENYTSIA

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — People fleeing besieged Mariupol described weeks of bombardments and deprivation as they arrived Monday in Ukrainian-held territory, where officials and relief workers anxiously awaited the first group of civilians freed from a steel plant that is the last redoubt of Ukrainian fighters in the devastated port city.

Video posted online Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children climbing over a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel plant and eventually boarding a bus.

More than 100 civilians from the plant were expected to arrive in Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

The evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol. Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the Sea of Azov city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-upon evacuation routes.

“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed green corridor has started working,” Zelenskyy said Sunday in a pre-recorded address published on his Telegram messaging channel.

At least some of the people evacuated from the plant were apparently taken to a village controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. The Russian military said Monday that some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens have left for Ukrainian-controlled territory. The information could not be independently verified.

In the past, Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow’s troops of forcibly relocating civilians from areas they have captured to Russia; Moscow has said the people wanted to go to Russia.

Zelenskyy told Greek state television that remaining civilians in the Mariupol steel factory were afraid to board buses because they believe they will be taken to Russia. He said he had been assured by the United Nations that they would be allowed to go to areas his government controls.

Mariupol has come to symbolize the human misery inflicted by the war. A Russian siege has trapped civilians with little access to food, water and electricity, as Moscow’s forces pounded the city to rubble in the face of stiffer than expected Ukrainian resistance.

Ukraine’s defense also thwarted Moscow’s attempt to take Kyiv in the opening weeks of the war and Russia has now shifted its focus to the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014. Mariupol lies in the Donbas.

Russia says its military has struck dozens of military targets in the region in the past day alone. But Ukrainian and Western officials claim Moscow’s troops are using indiscriminate weapons that are taking a heavy toll on civilians and are making only slow progress.

While official evacuations have often faltered, many people have managed to flee Mariupol under their own steam in recent weeks. Others are unable to escape.

“People without cars cannot leave. They’re desperate,” said Olena Gibert, who was among those arriving an a U.N.-backed reception center in Zaporizhzhia in dusty and often damaged private cars. “You need to go get them. People have nothing. We had nothing.”

She said many people still in Mariupol wish to escape the Russia-controlled city but can’t say so openly amid the atmosphere of constant pro-Russian propaganda.

Anastasiia Dembytska, who took advantage of the brief cease-fire around the evacuation of civilians from the steel plant to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog, told The Associated Press her family survived by cooking on a makeshift stove and drinking well water.

She said could see the steel plant from her window, when she dared to look out.

“We could see the rockets flying” and clouds of smoke over the plant, she said.

A defender of the plant said Russian forces resumed shelling the plant Sunday as soon as some civilians there were evacuated. It was unclear whether there would be further evacuation attempts.

Denys Shlega, commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, said in a televised interview that several hundred civilians remain trapped alongside nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “numerous” dead bodies.

“Several dozen small children are still in the bunkers underneath the plant,” Shlega said.

Before the weekend evacuation, about 1,000 civilians were also believed to be in the the sprawling, Soviet-era steel plant, along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters. As many as 100,000 people may still be in Mariupol overall.

The city, which had a pre-war population of more than 400,000, is a key Russian target because its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Moscow to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for fighting elsewhere in the Donbas.

A Ukrainian officer at the plant urged groups like the U.N. and the Red Cross to ensure the evacuation of wounded fighters, though he acknowledged that reaching some of the injured is difficult.

“There’s rubble. We have no special equipment. It’s hard for soldiers to pick up slabs weighing tons only with their arms,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, told the AP in an interview. “We hear voices of people who are still alive” inside shattered buildings.

The Azov Regiment originated as a far-right paramilitary unit and is now part of the Ukrainian military.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces struck dozens of military targets in eastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, including concentrations of troops and weapons and an ammunition depot near Chervone in the Zaporizhzhia region, which lies west of the Donbas.

The information could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian president’s office said at least three people were killed and another seven, including a child, were wounded in the Donbas in the last 24 hours. The regional administration in Zaporizhzhia said that at least two people died and another four were wounded in Russian shelling of the town of Orikhiv.

A full picture of battle unfolding in eastern Ukraine is hard to capture. The fighting makes it dangerous for reporters to move around, and both sides have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.

Ukraine’s military claimed Monday to have destroyed two small Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea. Drone footage posted online showed what the Ukrainians described as two Russian Raptor boats exploding after being struck by missiles.

The AP could not immediately independently confirm the strikes.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance has flowed into Ukraine during the war, but Russia’s vast armories mean Ukraine still needs massive support. Zelenskyy has appealed to the West for more weapons, and tougher economic sanctions on Russia.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other U.S. lawmakers visited Zelenskyy on Saturday to show American support. On Monday, the delegation met with Polish President Andrzej Duda and lawmakers in Warsaw to express gratitude to the country for its support of Ukraine.

European Union energy ministers were meeting Monday to discuss a new set of sanctions, which could include restrictions on Russian oil — though Russia-dependent members of the 27-nation bloc including Hungary and Slovakia are wary of taking tough action.

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Varenytsia reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, Jon Gambrell and Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.

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By DAVID KEYTON and INNA VARENYTSIA

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s leader accused Russia of trying to humiliate the United Nations by raining missiles on Kyiv during a visit by Secretary-General António Guterres, an attack that shattered the capital’s tentative return to normality as the focus of the war moved east.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s forces were holding off Russia’s attempted advance in the south and east, as efforts continued to secure safe passage for residents trapped in Mariupol, which has been largely reduced to rubble in a 2-month-long siege. An official in the president’s office did not rule out an evacuation as soon as Friday.

Russia pounded targets all over Ukraine on Thursday, including the attack on Kyiv that struck a residential high-rise and another building. U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said its journalist Vira Hyrych, who lived in one of the buildings hit, died. Her body was found in the rubble on Friday.

Ten people were wounded in the attack, including at least one who lost a leg, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.

In an apparent reference to the same strike, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that it had destroyed “production buildings” at the Artem defense factory in Kyiv.

The attack on Kyiv came barely an hour after Zelenskyy held a news conference with Guterres, who toured some of the destruction in and around Kyiv and condemned attacks on civilians during his visit.

“This says a lot about Russia’s true attitude towards global institutions, about attempts of Russian authorities to humiliate the U.N. and everything that the organization represents,” Zelenskyy said in an overnight video address to the nation. “Therefore, it requires corresponding powerful reaction.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko derided the attack as equivalent to Russian President Vladimir Putin showing Guterres “his middle finger.”

The strikes were the boldest Russian bombardment of the capital since Moscow’s forces retreated weeks ago following their failure to take the city in what they hoped would be a lightning offensive. Instead, stiff Ukrainian resistance, bolstered by Western arms, stalled Putin’s advance and forced his troops to pull back to regroup.

Some have now started to push into the country’s eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas, which Moscow now says is its focus. Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in the east has been difficult because airstrikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move around. Both Ukraine and the Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east also have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.

But so far, Russia’s troops and the separatist forces appear to have made only minor gains, and Britain’s Defense Ministry said Friday that those have been achieved at significant cost to Russia’s forces.

One aim of Guterres’ visit was to secure the evacuation of people from the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, including a shattered steelworks where Ukrainian defenders are holed up and hundreds of civilians are also sheltering, Previous evacuation attempts have collapsed.

“I cannot confirm the exact details of the operation to make sure it is done with safety for our people and for civilians stranded in Mariupol” said Saviano Abreu, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s humanitarian office.

An official in Zelenskyy’s office said negotiations were underway with U.N. mediation, and did not rule out an evacuation of the plant happening Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Mariupol has seen some of the most dramatic suffering of the war. Under siege since the early days of the invasion, many of its residents became trapped with scarce access to food, water, medicine or electricity.

An estimated 100,000 people are believed to still be in the city, and the city council warned Thursday that a lack of safe drinking water or a working sewer system could lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery. It added that bodies lay decaying under the rubble.

Russian forces largely control the city, but some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are holed up at the steel plant, the last known pocket of resistance. About 1,000 civilians are with them, and the fighters said recent concentrated bombings killed and wounded people.

Video posted online by Ukraine’s Azov Regiment inside the steel plant showed people combing through the rubble to remove the dead and help the wounded. The regiment said the Russians hit an improvised underground hospital and its operating room, killing an unspecified number of people. The video couldn’t be independently verified.

Russia’s invasion of its neighbor on Feb. 24 upended the post-Cold War security order. Putin, long irked by NATO’s expansion to eastern Europe, says the operation seeks the “demilitarization” of Ukraine, aims to protect people in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas and ensure Russia’s own security. One of Moscow’s demands has been that Ukraine drop its bid to join the western NATO alliance.

Ukraine and the West say it was an unprovoked and illegal invasion launched to topple the government in Kyiv.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote Friday on Twitter that a “security vacuum” had led to the war.

“We have then been knocking on NATO’s door, but it never opened,” he wrote. “The world owes Ukraine security, and we ask states to decide which security guarantees they are ready to provide.”

A day after Russia pounded a wide area of Ukraine, the governor of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentyn Reznichenko, said two towns there were hit by Russian Grad rockets on Friday. There was no immediate word on casualties or damage. Separately, the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, said that a border post came under mortar fire from Ukraine and that Russian border forces returned fire. He said there were no casualties on the Russian side.

Thursday’s explosions in northwestern Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky district shook the city and flames poured out the windows of the residential high-rise and another building. The capital had been relatively unscathed in recent weeks, and cafes and other businesses have started to reopen, while a growing numbers of people have been out and about, enjoying the spring weather.

The terrible human cost of the war, which has driven more than 11 million Ukrainians from their homes, continues to climb.

In Lyman, a town in Donetsk where Russian forces are reportedly trying to advance as part of their Donbas push, shells rained on Tatiana Maksagory’s home this week, devastating her family.

Maksagory’s 14-year-old grandson, Igor, was declared dead after emergency services drove him to the hospital. Her daughter was in serious condition and her son-in-law was also killed.

“Grandma, will I live?“ she said Igor asked her when they were in the basement waiting for help. “I said that he would live. But look what happened, I betrayed him.”

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This story has been updated to correct that Thursday’s strike on Kyiv was the boldest attack since Moscow’s retreat, not necessarily the first.

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Associated Press journalists Jon Gambrell and Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstyslav Chernov in Kharkiv, Yesica Fisch in Sloviansk, and AP staff around the world contributed to this report.

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By LAURAN NEERGAARD

Associated Press – Moderna on Thursday asked U.S. regulators to authorize low doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 6, a long-awaited move toward potentially opening shots for millions of tots by summer.

Frustrated families are waiting impatiently for a chance to protect the nation’s littlest kids as all around them people shed masks and other public health precautions — even though highly contagious coronavirus mutants continue to spread.

Moderna submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration that it hopes will prove two low-dose shots can protect babies, toddlers and preschoolers — albeit not as effectively during the omicron surge as earlier in the pandemic.

“There is an important unmet medical need here with these youngest kids,” Dr. Paul Burton, Moderna’s chief medical officer, told The Associated Press. Two kid-size shots “will safely protect them. I think it is likely that over time they will need additional doses. But we’re working on that.”

Now, only children ages 5 or older can be vaccinated in the U.S., using rival Pfizer’s vaccine, leaving 18 million younger tots unprotected.

Moderna’s vaccine isn’t the only one in the race. Pfizer is soon expected to announce if three of its even smaller-dose shots work for the littlest kids, months after the disappointing discovery that two doses weren’t quite strong enough.

Whether it’s one company’s shots or both, FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks said the agency will “move quickly without sacrificing our standards” in deciding if tot-sized doses are safe and effective.

While questions are swirling about what’s taking so long, Marks pointedly told lawmakers earlier this week that the FDA can’t evaluate a product until a manufacturer completes its application. In a statement Thursday, the FDA said Moderna still must submit some additional data to complete its request, but that the agency will schedule a meeting to publicly debate the evidence with its scientific advisers.

“It’s critically important that we have the proper evaluation so that parents will have trust in any vaccines that we authorize,” Marks told a Senate committee.

If FDA clears vaccinations for the littlest, next the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have to recommend who needs them — all tots or just those at higher risk from COVID-19.

Many parents are desperate for whichever vaccine gets to the scientific finish line first.

“We’ve been kind of left behind as everybody else moves on,” said Meagan Dunphy-Daly, a Duke University marine biologist whose 6-year-old daughter is vaccinated — but whose 3-year-old and 18-month-old sons are part of Pfizer’s trial.

The family continues to mask and take other precautions until it’s clear if the boys got real vaccine or dummy shots. If it turns out they weren’t protected in the Pfizer study and Moderna’s shots are cleared first, Dunphy-Daly said she’d seek them for her sons.

“I will feel such a sense of relief when I know my boys are vaccinated and that the risk of them getting a serious infection is so low,” she said.

Some parents even have urged the government to let families choose shots before all the evidence is in.

“This strain of COVID feels almost impossible to dodge,” Dana Walker, a mother of an 8-month-old, tearfully told a CDC meeting last week. “Cut red tape and allow parents to protect their kids.”

The FDA will face some complex questions.

In a study of kids ages 6 months through 5 years, two Moderna shots — each a quarter of the regular dose — triggered high levels of virus-fighting antibodies, the same amount proven to protect young adults, Burton said. There were no serious side effects, and the shots triggered fewer fevers than other routine vaccinations.

But the vaccine proved between about 40% and 50% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 during the trial. Burton blamed the omicron variant’s ability to partially evade vaccine immunity, noting that unboosted adults showed similarly less effectiveness against milder omicron infections. While no children became severely ill during the study, he said high antibody levels are a proxy for protection against more serious illness — and the company will test a child booster dose.

Another issue: So far in the U.S., Moderna’s vaccine is restricted to adults. Other countries have expanded the shot to kids as young as 6. But months ago the FDA cited concern about a rare side effect, heart inflammation, in teen boys, and it hasn’t ruled on Moderna’s earlier pediatric applications.

Burton said the FDA may consider its vaccine for children of all ages — but also might open it first to the youngest kids who have no other option. He said safety data from millions of older children given Moderna vaccinations abroad should help reassure parents.

While COVID-19 generally isn’t as dangerous in youngsters as adults, some do become severely ill or even die. About 475 children younger than 5 have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic’s start, according to the CDC, and child hospitalizations soared at omicron’s peak.

Yet it’s not clear how many parents intend to vaccinate the youngest kids. Less than a third of children ages 5 to 11 have had two vaccinations, and 58% of those ages 12 to 17.

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AP journalist Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.