says Zelenskiy
All women and children evacuated from Azovstal
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that over 300 civilians had been rescued from Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, where they had been trapped for 72 days.
THE GUARDIAN: Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that over 300 civilians had been rescued from Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, where they had been trapped for 72 days.
Speaking in his nightly Telegram address, he said:“I am grateful to the teams of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Organisation, who helped us organise the first phase of the evacuation missions from Azovstal,” Zelenskiy said in a video posted to Telegram.
However, while the Ukrainian government said that “all women, children and the elderly” had been evacuated , there were still doctors and soldiers, including many wounded, stuck in the bunkers of the Mariupol steel plant, which is still undergoing vicious shelling and attacks by Russian forces.
Ukraine on Saturday urged aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to evacuate its soldiers from their last holdout in Mariupol.
Ukraine “calls on MSF to organise a mission to evacuate the defenders of Mariupol and Azovstal and provide medical care to the wounded people, whose human rights were violated by Russian Federation,” the ministry of reintegration of temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine wrote in a statement in English.
They have been “for 72 days in a row under... ongoing shelling and attacks by the Russian army”, it added.
“Now, there is a lack of medicines, water and food, wounded soldiers are dying because of gangrene and sepsis.”
