Women and children evacuated from Mariupol plant

Several civilians, including women and children, brought out of last Ukrainian stronghold after a night of heavy Russian attacks.

Russian state media and a Ukrainian soldier say several people have been evacuated from a steel plant in the pulverised city of Mariupol, including women and children.

Russia’s RIA Novosti reported on Saturday that 25 civilians had been brought out from the Azovstal steelworks, the last Ukrainian stronghold in the bombed out ruins of Mariupol.

The news agency said the group included 19 adults and six children, but gave no further details.

A top official with the Azov Battalion, the Ukrainian unit defending the plant, said 20 civilians were evacuated during a cease-fire, though it was not clear if he was referring to the same group as the Russian news reports.

“Twenty civilians, women and children… have been transferred to a suitable place and we hope that they will be evacuated to Zaporizhzhia, on territory controlled by Ukraine,” Sviatoslav Palamar said in a video posted on the battalion’s Telegram channel.

He reported heavy bombardment of the site overnight and said fighters were still going through the rubble searching for civilians to rescue.

“All night, the enemy artillery bombarded the site,” he said.

“The Azov regiment is still clearing the rubble to get civilians out. We hope this procedure will continue that we will manage to evacuate all the civilians.”

There was no confirmation from the United Nations on the evacuations. The global body has been trying to broker a civilian evacuation from the plant, the only part of Mariupol that remains in the hands of Ukrainian troops.

An estimated 1,000 civilians and several hundred Ukrainian soldiers are thought to be sheltering in the maze of underground tunnels underneath the steelworks. Many of them require medical attention.

Call for evacuation of fighters

Video and images from inside the plant, shared with The Associated Press news agency by two Ukrainian women who said their husbands are among the fighters refusing to surrender there, showed unidentified men with stained bandages; others had open wounds or amputated limbs.

A skeleton medical staff was treating at least 600 wounded people, said the women, who identified their husbands as members of the Azov Regiment. Some of the wounds were rotting with gangrene, they said.

In the video the men said that they eat just once daily and share as little as 1.5 liters (50 ounces) of water a day among four people, and that supplies inside the besieged facility are depleted.

One shirtless man appeared to be in pain as he described his wounds: two broken ribs, a punctured lung and a dislocated arm that “was hanging on the flesh.”

“I want to tell everyone who sees this: If you will not stop this here, in Ukraine, it will go further, to Europe,” he said.

The women told the AP the video was taken in the last week in the maze of corridors and bunkers beneath the plant.

They urged that Ukrainian fighters also be evacuated alongside civilians, warning they could be tortured and executed if captured.

“The lives of soldiers matter too,” Yuliia Fedusiuk told AP in Rome.

Saviano Abreu, spokesman for the UN humanitarian office, said the world organization was negotiating with authorities in Moscow and Kyiv, but he could not provide details of the ongoing evacuation effort “because of the complexity and fluidity of the operation.”

“There is, right now, ongoing, high-level engagements with all the governments, Russia and Ukraine, to make sure that you can save civilians and support the evacuation of civilians from the plant,” Abreu told AP.

He would not confirm video posted on social media purportedly showing UN-marked vehicles in Mariupol.

Ukraine has blamed the failure of numerous previous evacuation attempts on continued Russian shelling.

The latest satellite images from the United States-based Maxar Technologies, taken on Friday, show nearly all the buildings at the steelworks have been destroyed.

Some roofs have been holed or complete caved in, some buildings reduced to rubble.