The Russian military has bombed an art school where around 400 people were taking refuge in the port city of Mariupol, Ukraine has claimed.

       Local authorities said the school’s building was destroyed and people could remain under the rubble. There was no immediate word on casualties.

       It comes after Russian forces on Wednesday bombed a theater in Mariupol where civilians were sheltering.

       City authorities said 130 people were rescued but many more could remain under the debris. A Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital in Mariupol earlier in the war.

       A satellite image on Saturday shows the aftermath of the airstrike on the Mariupol Drama theater, Ukraine

       (AP)

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       President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said an unrelenting siege by Russian troops would go down in history for what he said were war crimes.

       “To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,” Zelenskyy said in a video address to the nation.

       Mariupol, a strategic port on the Azov Sea, has been encircled by the Russian troops, cut from energy, food and water supplies and faced a relentless bombardment.

       Local authorities have said the siege has killed at least 2,300 people and some of them had to be buried in mass graves.

       Burning buildings in Mariupol are captured by Maxar satellite imagery

       (EPA-EFE)

       “Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth,” Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said in a video filmed in the city.

       Mr Vershnin said that the city is facing the fate of the Syrian city of Aleppo that was destroyed in 2016 in a Russian-backed seige during the Syrian war.

       Around 300,000 people are trapped in the strategic port city by Russian forces.

       The city council said on Saturday that thousands of residents were reportedly being taken against their will to Russia.

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       “It is known that the capture Mariupol residents were taken to filtration camps, where the occupies checked people’s phones and documents,” a statement from the Mariupol city council said.

       “After the inspection, some Mariupol residents were redirected to remote cities in Russia, the fate of others remains unknown.”

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