More than 170 civilians from Mariupol, including around 40 evacuees from the Azovstal steelworks in this port in southeastern Ukraine almost entirely under Russian control, arrived in Zaporizhzhia on Sunday evening, an AFP journalist noted.
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The evacuees, some with young children, got off the white buses which carried them to the parking lot of a shopping center in this major city in southeastern Ukraine, which had become a reception center for people fleeing areas occupied by the Russian army.
Aid workers were escorting elderly people including an old lady in a wheelchair.
A total of 174 civilians arrived on eight buses "
from the hell of Mariupol
", said the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Osnat Lubrani, on Twitter.
“
This new operation brings the total number of people evacuated from the area to more than 600
,” she said in a statement from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
On Friday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk spoke of “
50 women, children and elderly people from Azovstal who had been released from Azovstal
”.
“
Our work, however, is not finished
,” said Osnat Lubrani, assuring that “
dozens of people who wanted to join the convoy over the past few days have not been able to do so
”.
On Saturday, kyiv announced that all civilian women, all children and the elderly had been evacuated from the huge Azovstal metallurgical complex, the last pocket of resistance of Ukrainian forces against the Russian army in the devastated city of Mariupol.
"
This part of Mariupol's humanitarian mission has been accomplished
," said Iryna Vereshchuk on social networks, while President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that it was still necessary to evacuate the wounded and medical personnel.
