Mortuary’s workers move a dead body into a plastic bag in outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) 
Dead bodies are placed into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022 as people cannot bury their dead because of the heavy shelling by Russian forces. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) 
Dead bodies are put into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022 as people cannot bury their dead because of the heavy shelling by Russian forces. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) 
Dead bodies are prepared before being put into body bags and buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) 
A mortuary worker sits on body bags before they were transported to be buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka) 
A mortuary worker wheels a stretcher used to move dead bodies before they are buried on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
MARIUPOL, Ukraine | With bodies piling up in Russia’s nine-day siege of Mariupol, the port city of 430,000 in southeastern Ukraine, local authorities are hurrying to bury the dead in a mass grave.
City workers made quick signs of the cross gestures as they pushed bodies wrapped in carpets or bags into a deep trench some 25 meters (80 feet) long on the outskirts of the city.
More than 70 bodies have been interred in the common grave since it was opened Tuesday.
About half of those buried were killed in the intense shelling of the city, estimated an AP journalist who visited the burial ground. Others died at home from natural causes, but authorities were unable to arrange for the collection of the bodies or their burial.
Mariupol has suffered at least 8 major airstrikes in the past 48 hours, with a children’s hospital and the central fire department among those hit.
City residents are staying in shelters as much as possible as temperatures dip to minus 9 degrees Celsius (15 degrees Fahrenheit).