The mass evacuation of Mariupol was underway Monday with Ukrainian authorities hoping thousands more residents will escape the devastated city that once was home to about 500,000 people.

Mayoral adviser Petro Andryushchenko told Radio Svoboda that buses were rolling toward Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles west of Mariupol. People were also encouraged to join the exodus in their own cars.

The Ukraine military said civilians were already arriving in Zaporizhzhia, a city of about 750,000 people, and were being provided hot meals, physical and psychological examinations and medicines. “All evacuees will receive a calm refuge,” the statement said. “Finally, these people will be able to feel safe.”

Mariupol resident Yaroslav Dmytryshyn arrived at a reception center in Zaporizhzhia in a car full of kids with two signs taped to the back window that read: “Children” and “Little ones.”

“I can’t believe we survived,” Dmytryshyn said. “There is no Mariupol whatsoever. Someone needs to rebuild it, and it will take millions of tons of gold.” 

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Latest developments:

►A Russian missile strike caused deaths and injuries on Monday in Odesa, the governor of the southwestern region, Maksym Marchenko, said on social media. He didn’t specify how many were killed or injured. Ukrainian authorities previously said Russian forces destroyed a strategic bridge in Odesa, cutting access to shipments of weapons and other cargo from neighboring Romania.

►The Ukraine Finance Ministry says the country has received grant assistance of over $500 million from the World Bank’s Donor Trust Fund to spend on social, humanitarian, and health care needs.

►More than 1,202 bodies of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian troops have been found in the Kyiv region, regional police Chief Andrii Niebytov said.

►Kristina Kvien, U.S. Embassy charge d’affaires, attended a news conference Monday in Lviv to highlight the return of U.S. diplomats to Ukraine. The U.S. pulled out of its Kyiv embassy for Lviv before the war, then left Ukraine entirely after the February invasion. Denmark and South Korea resumed limited embassy operations in Kyiv on Monday.

US official: Russia may try to abduct local mayors in Ukraine’s eastern region

Russia may try to abduct local mayors in Ukraine’s eastern region and install Kremlin “puppets” in the latest phase of the war, a top State Department official said on Monday.

Michael Carpenter, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told reporters the U.S. has seen “highly credible” reports of planned “abductions of mayors and other local officials” in Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions.