After brutal fighting with Russian forces thwarted efforts to send scores of citizens to safety the day before, Ukraine claimed a new attempt to evacuate scores of civilians trapped in a damaged steel plant in Mariupol began on Friday.
The sprawling Soviet-era Azovstal steel plant is the last part of Mariupol still in the hands of holdout Ukrainian fighters. Mariupol, a strategic southern port on the Azov Sea, has endured the most destructive siege of the 10-week-old war.
U.N.-brokered evacuations of some of the hundreds of civilians who had taken shelter in the plant’s network of tunnels and bunkers began last weekend, but were delayed in recent days by increased fighting.
‘The next stage of rescuing our people from Azovstal is under way at the moment. The results will be made public later’ Andriy Yermak, the chief of the Ukrainian presidential staff, said as much. He didn’t say anything else.
Later, authorities in Mariupol accused Russian forces of violating a ceasefire at the steel factory by shooting at a car transporting Ukrainian fighters, killing one and wounded six. Russia has yet to respond to the city council’s online statement.
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