Staff Reporter
ACCORDING to the United Nations (UN), 2 million people have fled Ukraine, making it the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II, while the UN’s World Food Programme is calling for urgent donations.
Poland has received more than 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees, the most of any nation.
In Ukraine, food, water and medicine grow increasingly scarce.
A woman cries during a religious service at the St Volodymyr’s Cathedral in Kyiv. Photo: AP/Vadim Ghirda 
A factory and a store burn after having been bombarded in Irpin. Photo: AP/Emilio Morenatti 
A Ukrainian woman dressed in military attire prays inside the Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church in Lviv, western Ukraine. Photo: AP/ Bernat Armangue 
People queue to receive hot food in an improvised bomb shelter in Mariupol. Photo: AP/Evgeniy Maloletka
Civilians were leaving on buses amid a 12-hour-long cease-fire after Russia and Ukraine agreed on establishing five safe corridors for people to escape the fighting.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said both sides agreed to a cease-fire from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for the evacuation of civilians.
Humanitarian corridors have opened from Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol as well as Kyiv, the Interfax news agency reported, citing the Russian defence ministry.
In the capital, Kyiv, soldiers and volunteers have built hundreds of checkpoints to protect the city of nearly 4 million, using sandbags, stacked tires and spiked cables.
A video from Sumy showed the aftermath of an airstrike overnight with rescuers getting wounded out of the debris. A woman trapped under the rubble survived, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry.
Rescuers were going through the rubble in the night, using bare hands and flashlights, as well as machines to cut through concrete slabs to reach the victims.
Tuesday marked day thirteen of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
-Sources: AlJazeera/AP/AFP/BBC
