Vladimir Putin’s troops have been accused of forcibly deporting thousands of residents from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol to Russia.

       Mariupol’s city council said people had been taken over the border in the past week as heavy shelling continues.

       “Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents were deported on to the Russian territory,” a statement posted on Telegram said.

       “The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhniy district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing.”

       The claim, which has not been independently verified, comes as Russian military bombed an art school where around 400 people had sought refuge.

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       Mariupol Council said elderly people, women and children were still trapped under the rubble, but did not say how many casualties there had been.

       The evacuation of civilians from secure corridors continues in Mariupol

       (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

       The southeastern city has faced continuous attack with Russian forces on Wednesday bombing a theatre where civilians were sheltering, and an airstrike on a maternity hospital on March 10.

       It is facing a critical shortage of food, water and medicine with many of its 400,000 residents having been trapped for more than two weeks as Putin attempts to gain control.

       The theatre which Mariupol’s city council said Russian forces “deliberately and cynically destroyed”

       (AP)

       Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of war crimes over the siege, and said the attack on Mariupol “is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”.

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       Humanitarian corridors opened on Sunday to enable civilians to leave frontline areas, with almost 40,000 people - nearly 10 per cent of Mariupol’s population - fleeing the city over the past week.

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