In a long-awaited humanitarian mission, the United Nations is conducting a “safe passage operation” for civilians near the steelworks serving as the last-remaining Ukrainian stronghold in Mariupol.
Up to 1,000 civilians are thought to have been stuck underneath the Azovstal plant with minimal supplies alongside hundreds of fighters – some said to be suffering with festering wounds – after Vladimir Putin told Russian troops to blockade the area last week “so that a fly can’t get through”.
The first groups of civilians, totalling around 50 people so far, reportedly including children, were photographed by a Reuters journalist arriving to the relative safety of a temporary accommodation centre in the nearby Donetsk village of Bezimenne on Sunday.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to indicate he would meet with an initial group of 100 evacuees in the town of Zaporizhzhia on Monday.
