Ukraine says civilians unable to leave Mariupol on Thursday; Zelenskiy blames Russian 'terror'

The aftermath of Russian artillery shelling on a residential area in Mariupol where a rocket hit a house, according to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Mariupol, Ukraine, is seen in this screengrab from a video uploaded on social media on March 10, 2022. Armed Forces of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS

Not a single civilian was able to leave the encircled Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Thursday as Russian forces failed to respect a temporary ceasefire to allow evacuations, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on national television.

Efforts to send food, water and medicine into the city failed when Russian tanks attacked a humanitarian corridor, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a televised address.

"This is outright terror ... from experienced terrorists," he said. "The world needs to know this. I have to admit it - we are all dealing with a terrorist state."

Zelenskiy said Ukrainian authorities managed to evacuate almost 40,000 people on Thursday from five other cities.

Russia's defence ministry said earlier it would declare a ceasefire on Friday and open humanitarian corridors from Mariupol as well as Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Chernihiv.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Jon Boyle and Cynthia Osterman)