The city council in a besieged Ukrainian port city says 2,000 civilian vehicles have left Mariupol on a so-called humanitarian corridor.

The city council said another 2,000 cars were waiting to leave along the evacuation route, which runs west for more than 260 kilometers (160 miles) to the Ukraine-held city of Zaporizhzhia.

City officials advised drivers to spend the night along the route unless they were close to Zaporizhzhia by evening.

Mariupol had a population of 430,000 before the war. The strategically located port city has been under fire for more than two weeks. Local officials estimate the lethal siege has killed more than 2,300 people and said it had left residents desperate for food, water, heat and medicine.

It was not immediately clear if the number of departed cars given Tuesday included 160 vehicles that left the day before. The city council said nearly 300 people had arrived in Zaporizhzhia as of Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, a series of Russian strikes hit a residential neighborhood of Ukraine’s capital on Tuesday, igniting a huge fire and frantic rescue effort in a 15-story Kyiv apartment building. At least one person was killed and others remain trapped inside.

The Ukrainian military said artillery strikes hit the Svyatoshynskyi district of western Kyiv, adjacent to the suburb of Irpin that has seen some of the worst battles of the war.

Flames shot out of the apartment building as firefighters rescued people from ladders. Smoke choked the air.

A firefighter at the scene confirmed one person died and that several have been rescued alive but others are still inside as rescuers try to reach them.

Russian forces also stepped up strikes overnight on the northwest suburbs of Irpin, Hostomel and Bucha, the head of the Kyiv region Oleksiy Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.

Russian forces also renewed efforts Tuesday to capture the important port city of Mariupol in the south, and unleashed new artillery strikes on downtown Kharkiv in the east, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Facebook.

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