Kyiv [Ukraine], March 3 (ANI): Amid the escalating Ukraine-Russia crisis, Russian forces have seized control of the key southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, its mayor said.

"Russian forces seize the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson after taking control of the local council building, Kherson's mayor, Igor Kolykhaiev, said in a Facebook post on March 2," tweeted The Kyiv Independent.

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Indicating that the city is now under Russia's control, Kolykhaiev, in a social media post, said that the Ukrainian military is no longer in the city and that its inhabitants must now carry out instructions of "armed people who came to the city's administration", CNN reported.

Russian forces had surrounded Kherson, a strategically important city on an inlet from the Black Sea with a population of nearly 300,000, for several days, according to the media outlet.

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Also on Thursday capital city Kyiv woke up to an air raid alert with its residents being advised to take shelter in safe houses.

Air raid alerts in Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, Mykolaiv, Lviv, Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernihiv and Chernihiv Oblast, Volyn Oblast, Cherkasy Oblast, Kirovohrad Oblast, Poltava Oblast, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa, The Kyiv Independent tweeted.

Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday with 141 nations voting in favour of the move and five nations against it, with 35 countries, including India, abstaining. (ANI)

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