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Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol on Saturday in an attempt to crush the last pocket of resistance in a place of deep symbolic and strategic value to Moscow, Ukrainian officials said, Associated Press reported.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, announced he would meet Sunday in his nation’s capital with the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin. The White House declined to comment. 

Speaking at a news conference, Zelenskyy gave little detail about logistics of the encounter but said he expected concrete results — “not just presents or some kind of cakes, we are expecting specific things and specific weapons.”

It would be the first high-level US trip to Kyiv since the war began Feb. 24. While visiting Poland in March, Blinken stepped briefly onto Ukrainian soil to meet with the country’s foreign minister. Zelenskyy’s last face-to-face meeting with a US leader was Feb. 19 with Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the Associated Press.

In attacks on the eve of Orthodox Easter, Russian forces pounded cities and towns in southern and eastern Ukraine. 

A 3-month-old baby was among eight people killed when Russia fired cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa, officials said. Zelenskyy said 18 more were wounded.

“The war started when this baby was one month old. Can you imagine what is happening?” Zelenskyy said. “They are just bastards. ... I don’t have any other words for it, just bastards.” 

The Ukrainian military said Saturday it destroyed a Russian command post in Kherson, a southern city that fell to Russian forces early in the war.

The command post was hit on Friday, killing two generals and critically wounding another, the Ukrainian military intelligence agency said in a statement. The Russian military did not comment on the claim, which could not be confirmed.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a Zelenskyy adviser, said in an online interview that 50 senior Russian officers were in the command center when it was attacked, Associated Press reported.

The fate of the Ukrainians in the sprawling and besieged seaside steel mill in Mariupol, where Russia says its forces have taken the rest of the city, wasn’t immediately clear. Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military unit released a video reportedly taken two days earlier in which women and children holed up underground, some for as long as two months, said they longed to see the sun. 

“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air,” one woman in the video said. “You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.” 

Russia said it took control of several villages elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region and destroyed 11 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including three artillery warehouses. Russian attacks also struck populated areas. 

Associated Press journalists observed shelling in residential areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city; regional Gov. Oleh Sinehubov said three people were killed. In the Luhansk area of the Donbas, Gov. Serhiy Haidai said six people died during the shelling of a village, Gorskoi. 

In Sloviansk, a town in northern Donbas, the AP witnessed two soldiers arriving at a hospital, one of them mortally wounded.

Sitting in a wheelchair outside her damaged Sloviansk apartment, Anna Direnskaya, 70, said, “I want peace.” 

One of many native Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, Direnskaya said she wishes Russians would understand that Ukrainians are not bad people and that there should be no enmity between them, according to the Associated Press.

“Why is this happening?” she said. “I don’t know.” 

While British officials said Russian forces had not gained significant new ground, Ukrainian officials announced a nationwide curfew ahead of Easter Sunday, a sign of the war’s disruption and threat to the entire country. 

Mariupol has been a key Russian objective and has taken on outsize importance in the war. Completing its capture would give Russia its biggest victory yet, after a nearly two-month siege reduced much of the city to a smoking ruin. 

It would deprive Ukrainian of a vital port, free up Russian troops to fight elsewhere and establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014. Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Donbas. 

An adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office, Oleksiy Arestovich, said Russian forces resumed airstrikes on the Azovstal plant and were also trying to storm it, in an apparent reversal of tactics. Two days earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had given an order not to send troops in but instead to blockade the plant. 

Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with civilians sheltering in its underground tunnels. 

Earlier Saturday, the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released the video of about two dozen women and children. Its contents could not be independently verified. But if authentic, it would be the first video testimony of what life has been like for civilians trapped underground there, Associated Press reported.

The United States congressional delegation led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand paid a courtesy Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on Saturday.

During the meeting, the two sides exchanged views on various aspects of Nepal-United States relations and cooperation, read a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On the occasion,Prime Minister Deuba thanked the United States Congress for its continued support to Nepal, including during the difficult times of the 2015 earthquakes and the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Both sides underscored the importance of parliamentary interactions for the enrichment of the multidimensional Nepal-US friendship. Views were also exchanged on institutionalizing democracy and cooperation in climate change, the statement further read.

Earlier this morning, the visiting US delegation called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Khadka at the latter’s office.

During the meeting, Minister Khadka appreciated the longstanding US cooperation to Nepal’s development endeavours and expressed hope that the visit by the US delegation to Nepal will contribute to further strengthening of the bilateral relations.

The US congressional delegation reaffirmed the commitment to working closely with Nepal on the matters of common interests. The matters related to agriculture and food security as well as Nepal’s role in the UN peacekeeping also featured during the conversation, the Ministry said.

A United States high-ranking Congressional delegation has arrived in Kathmandu for an official visit on Friday.

The delegation led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (New York) includes Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), Cory Booker (New Jersey), Mark Kelly (Arizona), and Representative Mondaire Jones (17th Congressional District, New York), read a statement issued by the United States.

During the visit, the delegation will meet with Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and other government officials and political leaders to discuss a range of issues.

The group of lawmakers is also concerned about the effects of climate change in the Himalayan region. They plan to take part in a hike on Saturday afternoon to learn more about this urgent crisis, the statement further read.

Nepal reported 18 new Covid-19 cases on Friday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 133 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which nine returned positive. Likewise, 1, 518 people underwent antigen tests, of which ninevwere tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 25 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 282 active cases in the country.

Bharatpur Metropolitan City Mayor Renu Dahal resigned from her post on Friday.

She tendered her resignation to file candidacy for the post of mayor in the Bharatpur Metropolitan City.

Dahal submitted her resignation letter to Deputy Mayor Parbai Shah Thakuri this afternoon.

"The mayor has submitted her resignation. It has already been approved," Thakuri said.

Leader Dahal resigned from her post after the Election Commission said that all the local elected representatives need to resign before filing nominations if they want to contest the local level elections slated for May 13.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on Friday.

During the meeting held at the Prime Minister's official residence in Baluwatar, Prime Minister Deuba said that that Nepal has been organizing various programs to make the country's health service more effective.

He also thanked the World Health Organization for providing humanitarian aid to Nepal to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the occasion, Tedros praised Prime Minister Deuba for vaccinating almost all the people against the Covid-19.

He was of the opinion that the Nepal government's strategy was effective in controlling the Covid-19.

Tedros also thanked the government for starting to campaign to vaccinate children against typhoid.

Britain and India agreed on Friday to step up defence and business cooperation during a visit to New Delhi by Boris Johnson, who said a bilateral free-trade deal could be wrapped up by October, Reuters reported.

On his first visit to the Indian capital as UK prime minister, Johnson discussed with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi ways to boost security ties with India, which buys more than half of its military hardware from Russia.

Britain hopes its offer of closer security ties with the West will encourage India to cut its defence reliance on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a "special military operation"

"We had wonderful talks that have strengthened our relationship in every way," Johnson told a joint news briefing with Modi on the final day of his two-day trip.

"We have agreed a new and expanded defence and security partnership, a decades-long commitment that will not only forge tighter bonds between us, but support your goal of Make in India," he said, referring to Modi's domestic manufacturing push, according to Reuters.

Johnson said negotiators from the two countries were expected to complete a free-trade deal by the end of this year.

"We're telling our negotiators to get it done by Diwali in October. This could double our trade and investments by the end of the decade," he said.

Britain's efforts to bolster security ties follow an attempt last month by the United States to move India away from Russia, with its own offer of more defence and energy sales, after President Joe Biden called India "somewhat shaky" in acting against Russia.

India abstained from a United Nations vote condemning the invasion and has not imposed sanctions on Moscow, taking a stance that sparked off a recent flurry of diplomatic activity, such as visits by the foreign ministers of Russia and China.

Johnson said Britain would also support India’s goal of building its own fighter jets, to reduce expensive imports of military equipment. India now has a mix of Russian, British and French fighter jets, Reuters reported.

The Indian government last year gave a 480-billion-rupee ($6.28 billion) contract to state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd for 83 light-combat aircraft, Tejas, for delivery starting around 2023.

Johnson said Britain was also creating an India-specific open general export license to slash delivery times for defence items. Only the European Union and the United States currently have such licences, according to Reuters.

Birgunj Metropolitan City Mayor Bijay Kumar Sarawagi tendered his resignation on Friday.

Sarawagi, who is filing his candidacy again for the post of mayor from the CPN-UML in the upcoming local level elections, resigned from his post this afternoon.

The  Metropolitan Committee and the Province Committee of the party have already recommended the name of Sarawagi to the Central Committee as the mayoral candidate of the Birgunj Metropolitan City.

Sarawagi said that he resigned from the post as there is a provision in the election code of conduct that the local representatives must resign if they want to contest the local level elections.