Blackout and mass graves in besieged Ukraine port

Corpses abandoned in the street, fights over food and civilians desperately trying to flee Russian bombardment -- the meagre trickle of information out of Ukraine's besieged port city Mariupol is unremittingly grim. 

Those who have managed to escape are now desperately seeking news of family members who were not so fortunate. 

But communications have been almost entirely down since March 2, with just a few spots where a weak phone signal allows people to connect with the outside world. 

The city, normally home to half a million people, is without water, gas and electricity -- and residents say they have seen fights over food in recent days. 

Yulia, a 29-year-old teacher who gave only her first name, was among the few people to have escaped Mariupol since the siege began. 

She and her husband had to face checkpoints manned by Russian troops to leave. 

After a shell fell 50 metres from a crowd of people hoping to evacuate, some started to beg drivers to take them out, she said, but few people had spare seats. 

"On the road, we saw burnt-out civilian cars, some were overturned on the side of the road. We understood that Russians had shot them," she said. 

"Two kilometres from Mariupol, we saw Russians, their military equipment marked with the letter 'Z'. We thought that was our end, that they would kill us."

Yulia, who fled Mariupol on March 3, said her mother-in-law had not been able to leave, and could call only by making a "really dangerous" journey to a tower far from her home. 

"She said she was OK but the attacks don't stop. There are many corpses on the street and nobody buries them. They lie there for days. Sometimes utility services collect them and bury them all together in one huge grave," she said.

Constant bombardment 

Mariupol has been under constant bombardment for 10 days from artillery shells, and Grad, Smerch and Tochka U rockets, according to city council member Petro Andriushchenko. 

Channels on messaging app Telegram have sprung up, with friends and family posting pictures and information about their loved ones, hoping that others may know something of their fate. 

The regional military administration estimates 1,207 people have been killed, with many more likely under the debris. 

On Wednesday, three people -- including a child -- were killed and 14 injured in an attack on a children's and maternity hospital, causing international outrage. 

Attempts to establish a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians and to take in supplies have failed on multiple occasions, with Ukrainian officials accusing Russia of breaching agreed ceasefires. 

Yana Karban, 30, has not spoken to her parents, who live on Mariupol's Left Bank, since March 2 but spends most hours of the day trying to find news. 

Their neighbours managed to find a patch of phone signal for long enough to call their own daughter, who passed on news to Karban. 

She received a message that said: "It's a total disaster in the building. They were just hit by shelling and eight apartments are on fire. 

Help us

"My parents were crying, saying 'help us'," said Karban. "They want to leave the city but it's impossible as the shelling is everywhere -- it's impossible even to get out." 

Her parent's neighbours are now unreachable again and Karban is unable to contact anyone in the city herself -- she is just waiting for news about the fires, or if there were any victims. 

Images sent to AFP show green and blue-tinged shrapnel that Karban says were found in a wardrobe in her parent's building after attacks in the morning, shared by the sister of another neighbour. 

Karban, a PR manager for a tech company, lives in Kyiv but fled on the second day of the war to Zurich via Poland. 

The stress means she is now taking anti-anxiety drug Phenibut and her therapist has her practising Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), a psychotherapy treatment, to alleviate her distress. 

"I couldn't even stay in Poland as I was always seeing our flag flying and couldn't stop crying. I never thought that I'd become a war refugee," she said. 

"It's more than horrible, your brain just can't process emotionally what is happening. But who cares about mental health -- you just want your parents to stay alive."