By CARA AN­NA | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russ­ian forces pressed their as­sault on Ukrain­ian cities Fri­day, with new mis­sile strikes and shelling on the cap­i­tal Kyiv and the out­skirts of the west­ern city of Lviv, as world lead­ers pushed for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the Krem­lin’s re­peat­ed at­tacks on civil­ian tar­gets, in­clud­ing schools, hos­pi­tals and res­i­den­tial ar­eas.

The ear­ly morn­ing bar­rage of mis­siles on the out­skirts of Lviv was the clos­est strike yet to the cen­tre of the city, which has be­come a cross­roads for peo­ple flee­ing from oth­er parts of Ukraine and for oth­ers en­ter­ing to de­liv­er aid or fight.

Black smoke bil­lowed for hours af­ter the ex­plo­sions, which hit a fa­cil­i­ty for re­pair­ing mil­i­tary air­craft near the city’s in­ter­na­tion­al air­port, on­ly six kilo­me­tres (four miles) from the cen­tre. One per­son was wound­ed, the re­gion­al gov­er­nor, Maksym Kozyt­skyy, said.

Mul­ti­ple blasts hit in quick suc­ces­sion around 6 a.m., shak­ing near­by build­ings, wit­ness­es said. The mis­siles were launched from the Black Sea, but the Ukrain­ian air force’s west­ern com­mand said it had shot down two of six mis­siles in the vol­ley. A bus re­pair fa­cil­i­ty was al­so dam­aged, Lviv’s may­or An­driy Sadovyi said.

Lviv lies not far from the Pol­ish bor­der and well be­hind the front lines, but it and the sur­round­ing area have not been spared Rus­sia’s at­tacks. In the worst, near­ly three dozen peo­ple were killed last week­end in a strike on a train­ing fa­cil­i­ty near the city. Lviv’s pop­u­la­tion has swelled by some 200,000 as peo­ple from else­where in Ukraine have sought shel­ter there.

Ear­ly morn­ing bar­rages al­so hit a res­i­den­tial build­ing in the Podil neigh­bour­hood of Kyiv, killing at least one per­son, ac­cord­ing to emer­gency ser­vices, who said 98 peo­ple were evac­u­at­ed from the build­ing. Kyiv may­or Vi­tali Kl­itschko said 19 were wound­ed in the shelling.

Two oth­ers were killed when strikes hit res­i­den­tial and ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ings in the east­ern city of Kram­a­torsk, ac­cord­ing to the re­gion­al gov­er­nor, Pavlo Kyrylenko.

In city af­ter city around Ukraine, hos­pi­tals, schools and build­ings where peo­ple sought safe­ty have been at­tacked. Res­cue work­ers searched for sur­vivors in the ru­ins of a the­atre that served as a shel­ter when it was blown apart by a Russ­ian airstrike in the be­sieged south­ern city of Mar­i­upol Wednes­day.

In Kharkiv, a mas­sive fire raged through a lo­cal mar­ket af­ter shelling Thurs­day. One fire­fight­er was killed and an­oth­er in­jured when new shelling hit as emer­gency work­ers fought the blaze, emer­gency ser­vices said.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said it has ver­i­fied 43 at­tacks on hos­pi­tals and health fa­cil­i­ties, with 12 peo­ple killed and 34 in­jured.

U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken said Thurs­day that Amer­i­can of­fi­cials were eval­u­at­ing po­ten­tial war crimes and that if the in­ten­tion­al tar­get­ing of civil­ians by Rus­sia is con­firmed, there will be “mas­sive con­se­quences.”

The Unit­ed Na­tions po­lit­i­cal chief, Un­der­sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Rose­mary Di­Car­lo, al­so called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to civil­ian ca­su­al­ties, re­mind­ing the U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil that in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an law bans di­rect at­tacks on civil­ians.

She said many of the dai­ly at­tacks bat­ter­ing Ukrain­ian cities “are re­port­ed­ly in­dis­crim­i­nate” and in­volve the use of “ex­plo­sive weapons with a wide im­pact area.” Di­Car­lo said the dev­as­ta­tion in Mar­i­upol and Kharkiv “rais­es grave fears about the fate of mil­lions of res­i­dents of Kyiv and oth­er cities fac­ing in­ten­si­fy­ing at­tacks.”

About 35,000 civil­ians left Mar­i­upol over the pre­vi­ous two days, Kir­ilenko said Fri­day.

Hun­dreds of civil­ians were said to have tak­en shel­ter in a grand, columned the­atre in the city’s cen­tre when it was hit Wednes­day by a Russ­ian airstrike. On Fri­day, their fate was still un­cer­tain, with con­flict­ing re­ports on whether any­one had emerged from the rub­ble. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions are dis­rupt­ed across the city and move­ment is dif­fi­cult be­cause of shelling and fight­ing.

“We hope and we think that some peo­ple who stayed in the shel­ter un­der the the­atre could sur­vive,” Petro An­drushchenko, an of­fi­cial with the may­or’s of­fice, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press Thurs­day. He said the build­ing had a rel­a­tive­ly mod­ern base­ment bomb shel­ter de­signed to with­stand airstrikes. Oth­er of­fi­cials said ear­li­er that some peo­ple had got­ten out.

Video and pho­tos pro­vid­ed by the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary showed the at least three-sto­ry build­ing had been re­duced to a roof­less shell, with some ex­te­ri­or walls col­lapsed. Satel­lite im­agery on Mon­day from Maxar Tech­nolo­gies showed huge white let­ters on the pave­ment out­side the the­atre spelling out “CHIL­DREN” in Russ­ian — “DE­TI” — to alert war­planes to the vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple hid­ing in­side.

Rus­sia’s mil­i­tary de­nied bomb­ing the the­atre or any­place else in Mar­i­upol on Wednes­day.

In Cherni­hiv, at least 53 peo­ple were brought to morgues over 24 hours, killed amid heavy Russ­ian air at­tacks and ground fire, the lo­cal gov­er­nor, Vi­ach­eslav Chaus, told Ukrain­ian TV Thurs­day.

Ukraine’s emer­gency ser­vices said a moth­er, fa­ther and three of their chil­dren, in­clud­ing 3-year-old twins, were killed when a Cherni­hiv hos­tel was shelled. Civil­ians were hid­ing in base­ments and shel­ters across the em­bat­tled city of 280,000.

“The city has nev­er known such night­mar­ish, colos­sal loss­es and de­struc­tion,” Chaus said.

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy said ear­ly Fri­day he was thank­ful to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden for ad­di­tion­al mil­i­tary aid, but he would not get in­to specifics about the new pack­age, say­ing he did not want Rus­sia to know what to ex­pect. He said when the in­va­sion be­gan on Feb. 24, Rus­sia ex­pect­ed to find Ukraine much as it did in 2014, when Rus­sia seized Crimea with­out a fight and backed sep­a­ratists as they took con­trol of the east­ern Don­bas re­gion.

In­stead, he said, Ukraine had much stronger de­fens­es than ex­pect­ed, and Rus­sia “didn’t know what we had for de­fense or how we pre­pared to meet the blow.”

In a joint state­ment, the for­eign min­is­ters of the Group of Sev­en lead­ing economies ac­cused Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin of con­duct­ing an “un­pro­voked and shame­ful war,” and called on Rus­sia to com­ply with the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice’s or­der to stop its at­tack and with­draw its forces.

Both Ukraine and Rus­sia this week re­port­ed some progress in ne­go­ti­a­tions. Ze­len­skyy said he would not re­veal Ukraine’s ne­go­ti­at­ing tac­tics.

“Work­ing more in si­lence than on tele­vi­sion, ra­dio or on Face­book,” Ze­len­skyy said. “I con­sid­er it the right way.”

Putin spoke by phone Fri­day with Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz, who urged the Russ­ian pres­i­dent to agree to an im­me­di­ate cease-fire and called for an im­prove­ment to the hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion, a spokesman for Scholz said.

In a state­ment about the call, the Krem­lin said Putin told the Ger­man chan­cel­lor that Ukraine had “un­re­al­is­tic pro­pos­als” and was drag­ging out ne­go­ti­a­tions. The Krem­lin al­so said it was evac­u­at­ing civil­ians, and ac­cused Ukraine of com­mit­ting war crimes by shelling cities in the east.

While de­tails of Thurs­day’s talks were un­known, an of­fi­cial in Ze­len­skyy’s of­fice told the AP that on Wednes­day, the main sub­ject dis­cussed was whether Russ­ian troops would re­main in sep­a­ratist re­gions in east­ern Ukraine af­ter the war and where the bor­ders would be.

The of­fi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the sen­si­tive talks, said Ukraine was in­sist­ing on the in­clu­sion of one or more West­ern nu­clear pow­ers in the ne­go­ti­a­tions and on legal­ly bind­ing se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees for Ukraine.

In ex­change, the of­fi­cial said, Ukraine was ready to dis­cuss a neu­tral mil­i­tary sta­tus.

Rus­sia has de­mand­ed that NA­TO pledge nev­er to ad­mit Ukraine to the al­liance or sta­tion forces there.

The fight­ing has led more than 3 mil­lion peo­ple to flee Ukraine, the U.N. es­ti­mates. The death toll re­mains un­known, though Ukraine has said thou­sands of civil­ians have died.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Yuras Kar­manau in Lviv, Ukraine, and oth­er AP jour­nal­ists around the world con­tributed to this re­port.