Ukraine, UN hopes for more evacuations from besieged steel mill in Mariupol

Ukrainian officials and the United Nations held out hope for more evacuations from the bombed-out steel mill in Mariupol as scores of civilians reached relative safety after enduring weeks of Russian shelling against the city’s last pocket of resistance.

While the evacuees savoured hot food, clean clothing and other comforts that were denied to them while underground, Russian forces on Tuesday began storming the plant, where some Ukrainian fighters were still holed up.

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Thanks to the evacuation effort over the weekend, 101 people — including women, the elderly, and 17 children, the youngest 6 months old — emerged from the bunkers under the Azovstal steel works to “see the daylight after two months,” said Osnat Lubrani, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine.

One evacuee said she went to sleep at the plant every night afraid she wouldn’t wake up.

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“You can’t imagine how scary it is when you sit in the bomb shelter, in a damp and wet basement, and it is bouncing and shaking,” 54-year-old Elina Tsybulchenko said upon arriving in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, in a convoy of buses and ambulances.

She said if the shelter were hit by a bomb like the ones that left the huge craters she saw on the two occasions she ventured outside, “all of us would be done.”

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Evacuees, a few of whom were in tears, made their way from the buses into a tent offering food, diapers and connections to the outside world. Some of the evacuees browsed racks of donated clothing, including new underwear.

The news for those left behind was more grim. Ukrainian commanders said Russian forces backed by tanks began storming the sprawling plant, which includes a maze of tunnels and bunkers spread out over 11 square kilometres (4 square miles).

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It was unclear how many Ukrainian fighters were still inside, but the Russians put the number at about 2,000 in recent weeks, and 500 were reported to be wounded. A few hundred civilians also remained there, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

“We’ll do everything that’s possible to repel the assault, but we’re calling for urgent measures to evacuate the civilians that remain inside the plant and to bring them out safely,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, said on the messaging app Telegram.

He added that throughout the night, the plant was hit with naval artillery fire and airstrikes. Two civilian women were killed and 10 civilians wounded, he said.