Evacuation of women and children rescued from Mariupol steelworks is delayed

Civilians rescued from a holdout district in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol have not arrived at a safe location as expected.

An operation to evacuate people from the Azovstal plant is understood to have started on Friday evening, with more than 100 people expected to arrive in the city of Zaporizhzhia, 140 miles northwest of Mariupol, today.

They are now expected to arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Sky News correspondent Alex Rossi says the delay is thought to be down to the fact that there are around 20 checkpoints to travel through to get from Russian-controlled Ukraine to areas still held by Ukrainian forces.

There are concerns the evacuees could be taken to Russia instead.

Shelling in Mariupol resumes after evacuation – Ukraine news live

Russia’s defence ministry said 69 of those rescued chose to evacuate to Ukraine-controlled territory and 57 asked to stay in areas under Russian control.

In recent weeks Ukraine has accused Moscow’s forces of taking civilians to Russia against their will, an allegation the Kremlin has denied.

The delay comes as a Ukrainian commander claimed several hundred civilians remain trapped at the Azovstal steelworks alongside hundreds of wounded soldiers and “numerous” dead bodies.

Denys Shlega, a national guard commander, said the situation remained dire at the plant – the last stronghold in Mariupol not occupied by Russian forces.

“Several dozen small children are still in the bunkers underneath the plant,” Mr Shlega said.

Before the evacuation began, about 1,000 civilians and 2,000 fighters were believed to be in tunnels and bunkers underneath the complex.

About 100,000 are believed to still be in the wider city.

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“The situation there is absolutely desperate. What we do know is that the fighters trapped in the Azovstal plant, they haven’t been able to escape and there’s no sign that they will be able to at all,” Sky’s Alex Rossi said.

“I spoke to the wife of one of the fighters yesterday, and she told me she feared that they would never be let out by the Russians and that they ultimately wouldn’t be able to escape with their lives.

“People here are very worried about what will happen next. But the hope is that some of those civilians will be able to get to where I am in the next 24 hours or so.”

Mr Shlega said shelling at the plant continued after a group of civilians was evacuated on Sunday. The schedule of any further evacuations is unclear.

Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov regiment, said the steelworks was strewn with mines, rockets, artillery shells and unexploded cluster ordnance.

Family ‘survived on water from well’

On Sunday, a convoy of UN and Russian military vehicles took more than 50 people to tented accommodation in the village of Bezimenne, about 18 miles (30km) east of Mariupol.

Russian state media said they would be allowed to continue to Ukrainian territory if they wanted to. There have been claims that some Ukrainians have been forced to go to Russia.

A woman who took advantage of the brief ceasefire to evacuate from Mariupol with her family said they had survived by drinking well water and cooking on a makeshift stove.

Anastasiia Dembytska said she could see “rockets flying” and smoke over the plant – if she dared look out her window.

Meanwhile, the Mariupol City Council said on Telegram that the evacuation from other parts of the city would begin on Monday morning.

People fleeing Russian-occupied areas have previously described their vehicles being fired on, while Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Putin’s forces of shelling evacuation routes on which the two sides had agreed.

Elsewhere on Sunday, an explosive device damaged a railway bridge in the Kursk region of Russia, which borders Ukraine, according to the region’s government.

It follows a number of recent fires and explosions in Russian regions near the border.

In the Donetsk region, four civilians were reported killed and 11 more were injured by Russian shelling on Sunday, the Ukrainian regional governor said.

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Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote in a Telegram post that the deaths and seven of the injuries were in the northern city of Lyman.

He added that another person also died in the city of Bakhmut from injuries received in the Luhansk region.

In his nightly address on Sunday, President Zelenskyy accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination” in reference to strikes against non-military targets.

He said that Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertiliser warehouses, and residential neighbourhoods in the Kharkiv, Donbas and other regions.

“The targets they choose prove once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of extermination for the Russian army,” he said.

His comments came as the Ukrainian army said that a Russian offensive along a broad front in the country’s east was stalling following human and material losses inflicted by Ukraine’s forces.

In a Facebook post, Ukraine’s military said that Russian troops were trying to advance in the Sloboda, Donetsk and Tauride regions, but were being held back by Ukrainian forces that continue to fight village by village.