Russia says 46 civilians evacuated from area around Mariupol steel plant

Two groups of civilians were evacuated from near the besieged Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol on Saturday, Russian state news agencies said.

A total of 46 people left “residential buildings adjacent to the Azovstal” and “received accommodation and food,” TASS and RAI Novosti said, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.

Russian agencies did not disclose where the evacuees were being taken.

On Sunday, a Ukrainian commander inside the plant said some civilians had been evacuated from the steelworks after the introduction of a ceasefire.

Captain Svyatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, said the ceasefire, which was supposed to start at 6 am local time, ended up starting at 11 am local time.

Palamar said 20 women and children were taken to the “agreed meeting point” in the hope that they would be evacuated to the “agreed destination” of Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian-controlled city in the south-east of the country.

Some context: With the plant subject to heavy Russian bombardment in recent weeks, there are believed to be hundreds of people – dozens of them injured – inside the steel complex.

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding, which owns the factory, told CNN on Friday that at least 150 of the factory’s 11,000 employees have been killed and thousands remain missing.

Haunting footage shared by Ukrainian soldiers last week, allegedly filmed in the vast network of tunnels beneath the plant, showed women and children living underground in a dark, damp basement.

In the videos, a mother said she hasn’t seen the sun in weeks and will soon run out of food. An old woman, her head bandaged and bloodied, trembles on a cot. A baby wears a plastic bag secured with duct tape around her tiny waist – no diapers.