VINNYTSIA, Ukraine – A Russian siege and hours of shelling have battered rail links and bridges in a key Ukrainian port, its mayor said Thursday, cutting off water, power and food to the city.

“They impede the supply of food, create a blockade for us,” Vadym Boychenko, mayor of Mariupol, wrote in a Telegram message. As workers waited for a respite from the barrage to begin restoring electricity, the city council said it would try to negotiate a cease-fire and a safe corridor to bring in supplies and evacuate civilians.

“We again have no light, water and heat,” Boychenko mayor said. “We are being destroyed as a nation.”

The city of more than 400,000, which lies on the Sea of Azov near the Russian border, remained under Ukrainian control but was encircled by Russian troops, Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov said. Russia was slashing access to Ukrainian ports to extend control over the country’s southern coastline.

“The situation is quite critical,” Orlov told CNN. He said it was difficult to count how many people have died, given the ongoing attack: “We cannot collect all the bodies.”

Ivan Syniepalov, 29, left Mariupol with his wife and sister last week. He told The Washington Post he’d been unable to reach anyone there by phone over the past day, but messages occasionally came through. “Many people want to get out, but it’s not possible, it’s just not possible,” he said. “Your only option is to hide in the basement and wait.”

Larger stores still have some food supplies, he said, but smaller shops have run out. “The main feeling now is not fear, it’s anger.”

A leader of a pro-Moscow separatist militia in eastern Ukraine told Russian state television Thursday that a “humanitarian corridor” was open to allow civilians to escape. The leader, Eduard Basurin, accused the opposing side of preventing people from fleeing. But local officials and Ukrainians who have spoken with family members in the city said the damage to infrastructure and the attacks had made it impossible to leave.

Petro Andryuschenko, an adviser to the Mariupol mayor’s office, said there was no safe passage out. “Russia has completely blocked everything,” he said. He said water towers and electricity substations had been hit.

Speaking over a crackling telephone connection, Andryuschenko said that at least 10 people had been killed in the past two days and there were more than 150 injured in the city’s only functioning hospital, but officials could not estimate total casualties. “We can’t even go outside to assess,” he said.

The hospital has a backup generator but he was unsure how long fuel supplies would last. The council said workers had been trying to deliver drinking water to residents during the daytime.

The eastern side of Mariupol lay in ruins, Andryuschenko said, and he feared the onslaught would flatten the city. “There isn’t going to be anything left to take.”

Halina Odnorog, 43, is from Mariupol. Her daughter and brother were in the Ukrainian army there. She said her sisters there did not have electricity or heating. “Now there is no bread, no food, no water,” she said from Kyiv. “People are struggling to survive.”

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Francis reported from London. Dixon reported from Moscow. The Washington Post’s David L. Stern in Mukachevo, Ukraine, and Anastacia Galouchka in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, also contributed to this report.

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