Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday said that over 3,000 people have been led to safety from the besieged city of Mariupol.

“Today, humanitarian corridors were working in three regions: Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia. We have managed to rescue 6,266 people, including 3,071 people from Mariupol,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address early Saturday.

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Earlier on Friday, an AFP reporter saw around 30 evacuation buses pull into the city of Zaporizhzhya, some of them carrying people who had escaped to Mariupol on their own and then were taken by bus to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

It was not immediately clear if Zelensky was referring to the same people.

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Meanwhile, dozens of sites of considerable cultural import have been damaged by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, UNESCO and its sister agency UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) said on Friday.

UNESCO also said that as many as 53 sites of cultural importance had been damaged in the fighting in Ukraine, including 29 religious sites, 16 historic buildings, 4 museums and 4 monuments.

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This list, however, does not include sites in the besieged cities of Mariupol or the city of Kherson that has been captured by Russia.

The update provided by UNESCO on Friday comes two weeks after the agency sent a letter to Moscow, reminding it of its obligations to protect sites of cultural heritage during a conflict, as per international law.