Ireland prepares to take in well more than 20,000 refugees as Russia intensifies attacks in Ukraine

THE Irish government is preparing to take in well over 20,000 refugees as Russia intensifies its attacks on key Ukrainian cities.

Fighting raged for a seventh day in the north, east and south of Ukraine yesterday.

Hundreds of people are feared dead in the southern port of Mariupol following hours of sustained shelling. In the south, Russia was battling for control of Kherson but its mayor said the city was still held by Ukrainian forces. There were also reports of more rocket fire and air strikes in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv.

In other developments:

:: The UN General Assembly voted to condemn Russia's invasion in its first emergency meeting since 1997

:: The taoiseach rejected further calls for the Russian ambassador to Ireland to be expelled

:: Talks between Ukraine and Russia were expected to resume as negotiators travelled to Belarus.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin confirmed that the Irish government was working to secure accommodation for Ukrainian refugees. He also said that the government could not act alone, as it prepares for the arrival of people fleeing the Russian invasion.

"It will be at a scale and at a level that we will require volunteers, people in civil society, to work with us to help people when they come here," he said.

He indicated that the state may be required to take in well over the 20,000 Ukrainian refugees estimated in the early days of the invasion.

"We've got to be ready as a country in terms of the more general consequences, migration being one," he added.

The Republic has also joined Britain and dozens of allies pressing for an investigation to be launched rapidly into Vladimir Putin’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities after Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused the Russian president of war crimes and “abhorrent” attacks.

Mr Johnson spoke to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, promising further support and weapons for the forces resisting Russia's military.

Strikes that damaged the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial in Kyiv and the central square in Kharkiv have caused revulsion, and Western allies fear it is a sign of a shift in Russian tactics further towards the indiscriminate targeting of urban areas.

"What we have seen already from Vladimir Putin's regime in the use of the munitions that they have already been dropping on innocent civilians, in my view, already fully qualifies as a war crime," Mr Johnson said.