A first group of civilians has been able to escape the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol along a humanitarian corridor.

More than 160 private cars were able to evacuate from the port city Monday, the Mariupol city council said in a post on Telegram, and were headed toward Zaporizhzhia further north. Russian forces were so far observing a cease-fire along the route, the city council added.

The news comes after days of failed attempts to evacuate civilians trapped in dire conditions under Russian shelling. The strategic city has been encircled and bombarded, leaving its residents without water, heat, food and supplies for more than a week.

The Ukrainian government is hoping to let civilians leave and also bring in a convoy of aid and supplies for the city.

A pregnant woman pictured being carried from a Ukrainian maternity hospital after it was shelled by Russian forces has died along with her unborn baby, Ukraine's foreign ministry said on Monday.

The woman, who has not been named, was photographed on a stretcher as she was being taken to an ambulance amid the devastation and ruin in the besieged city of Mariupol on March 9.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “an atrocity” and said that three people died in the bombing. It’s unclear if the unnamed woman’s death is in addition to these.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry announced the woman’s death in a tweet, and repeated the government’s plea for Western powers to enforce a no-fly zone over the country to prevent future airstrikes.

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Beijing has pushed back on reports that Russia had asked China for military equipment and other support following the start of its invasion of Ukraine, saying on Monday that “the U.S. has been spreading disinformation and this is very dangerous.”

“We need to advance a diplomatic solution of the situation instead of further escalating the situation,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a regular press briefing.

As fighting intensified across Ukraine, three American officials said on Sunday that the U.S. government had reason to believe that Russia had asked China for the help.

News of the requests came amid the intensifying Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities and residential areas, and was expected to be a key topic of discussion between President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and China’s senior diplomat, Yang Jiechi, during a meeting scheduled for later on Monday in Rome.

On Sunday, a particularly deadly Russian airstrike on a military base in western Ukraine killed at least 35 people.

On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Moscow had requested military aid from other countries.

The officials with knowledge of Russia’s request to China declined to elaborate on whether Beijing agreed to supply military aid, or whether the United States even knows the answer to that question. They declined say what kind of equipment was requested, and whether it was lethal.

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LVIV, Ukraine — Lifelong Lviv residents Myroslav Pavlyshyn, 63, and Myron Beheza, 72, were enjoying a rare sunny afternoon in the city’s historic district on Sunday.

Earlier that morning, a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s Yavoriv military base just 40 miles away killed 35 people and wounded at least 130. It was a wakeup call for the residents of still-peaceful Lviv, in western Ukraine. The war is getting closer. But the influx of refugees has already dramatically changed the city. 

“So many people, so many people came,” Pavlyshyn said.

Beheza said they went to a railway station on Sunday. “Buses, trains are coming one after another. So many people — it makes me tear up," he said. "It’s hard but our people are very welcoming. They give out coffee, sandwiches and send the [refugees] farther to Poland. In every household, people are sheltering refugees.”

He added that the mayor said it's been hard on the city, but said the residents were coping "just fine." 

"It’s so hard for me,” Beheza said as he wiped away tears with a handkerchief. “Poor people, small children, elderly, they have nothing with them. They have been kicked out of their warm apartments and came here. But our people are very kind. We help them with everything we can. It will be fine, we will win.”

Ukrainians from Pavlyshyn and Beheza’s generation were born in the then-Soviet Union and spent more than half their lives under its power. Pavlyshyn had no nostalgia for the past.

“In the Soviet Union, everyone was stealing everything,” he said. "There were huge lines to the shops, shelves were empty. Every now and then, you can see elderly people saying how great things were under the Soviet Union. They had to stand in the line for the whole night just to buy some milk. F--- the Soviet Union.”

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Monday.

Lavrov said the two spoke at length about the situation in Ukraine, including the creation of humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians. He also reiterated Russia's claim that the conflict is aimed at protecting territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists from direct military threats, though the Kremlin invaded after months of military buildup and political demands and the war has extended far beyond those areas.

Ninety Ukrainian children have died and more than 100 wounded since the start of the conflict, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said Monday in a statement posted on Telegram, citing juvenile prosecutors.

The statement said most victims were in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr regions.

It added that more than 379 educational institutions have been hit by bombs and shelling, of which 59 have been completely destroyed. 

NBC News was not able to independently verify the numbers.

Russian forces fired on a high-rise in Kyiv, killing one and injuring seven, Kyiv state administration said on Telegram. Officials added that shelling was also directed at the Antonov aircraft plant in the capital.