Trapped : The Battle To Escape Putin's Wrath

‘She will never see her home again, it’s very sad’

- Kim Sengupta In Irpin

The emergency packages of food and water had been delivered and the evacuation process was under way. But then shellfire erupted, bringing with it widespread panic as people began to scramble out of the bus, which was due to take them to safety...

The civic society activists, who had come to Irpin to collect civilians, pleaded with them to get back on board, saying they would be trapped behind enemy lines otherwise. But the families, calling out to each other, with children crying and pet dogs barking, ran to a church nearby - and soon it was too late for them to escape.

The roads out of the district of Slayvo - “Radiance” – was being cut by Russian troops who had come through a wood. The Kyiv activists were now themselves desperate to get away, fearing the worst if they were to fall into Russian hands. They roared away in their cars, the bus left behind.

But within minutes, two local cars ahead of them were hit by mortar fire, forcing them into screeching U-turns. Three people, one of them a child, are reported to have been found in the burning wreckages.

The fighting was in Irpin, a town of 62,000 which sits about 20km (12 miles) to the northwest of Kyiv, which has become a prime target for Russian forces trying to encircle the Ukrainian capital. The city has been battered by prolonged missile strikes and artillery fire, with intense firefights, as Ukrainian troops try to claw back streets and districts.

The confrontation has become increasingly fierce here and in Bucha, the next town to the north, as well as Hostomel Airport, where a Russian military contingent of tanks and armoured cars – the forward elements of a 64km-long convoy (40 miles) – has been gathering with the aim of an eventual assault on the capital.