March 21 (UPI) -- Russian forces have targeted a shopping mall in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and the shelling killed several people, Ukrainian authorities said on Monday.
The State Emergency Services of Ukraine said in a statement that the Retroville Mall was attacked late on Sunday and the shelling sparked fires in the parking lot and on four floors of the retail center.
Surveillance video showed the mall engulfed in flames before emergency crews put them out and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a tweet that several explosions had rocked the district.
Officials said on Monday that at least eight people were killed in the mall attack.
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A Ukrainian man who lives next to the retail center told American photojournalist Daniel Carde that the mall had been used by the Ukrainian military to launch missiles, Carde said in a tweet.
It was not immediately clear whether the victims of the shelling attack were civilians or members of the Ukrainian military.
The attack came as Russian forces continued to try and get closer to taking Kyiv. For weeks, Russian troops have shelled areas in and around the capital, but progress has been slowed by stiff Ukrainian resistance.
The British defense ministry said in an intelligence update on Monday that Ukrainian forces have successfully kept Russian forces more than 15 miles from reaching the center of Kyiv.
"Despite the continued lack of progress, Kyiv remains Russia's primary military objective and they are likely to prioritize attempting to encircle the city over the coming weeks," the ministry said in a statement.
The Institute for the Study of War said in a report over the weekend that Russian forces are making limited advances, but are "very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way."
"The doctrinally sound Russian response to this situation would be to end this campaign, accept a possibly lengthy operational pause, develop the plan for a new campaign, build up resources for that new campaign, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready," it states.
"The Russian military has not yet adopted this approach. It is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail."
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Sunday that about 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes to escape the fighting, which is in its fourth week.
The UNHCR also said that more than 900 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion -- including dozens of children -- and about 1,500 have been injured.
Also Sunday, Ukrainian officials rejected a Russian demand to surrender the port city of Mariupol in exchange for opening a couple humanitarian corridors.
Ukrainian officials said that dozens of buses would be sent Monday to evacuate more citizens from Mariupol, which has been under Russian attack since March 1. The officials said that about 40,000 people have been evacuated from the city over the past week.
