A Ukrainian fighter trapped in the city of Mariupol said on Monday that up to 200 civilians remained trapped inside bunkers at the Azovstal steelworks after a United Nations-led evacuation operation to rescue civilians from the site.
Captain Sviatoslav Palamar, 39, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, told Reuters his fighters could hear the voices of people trapped in bunkers in the vast industrial complex.
He said they were women, children and the elderly, but that Ukrainian forces did not have the mechanized equipment needed to dislodge the rubble, he said.
“We were planning to destroy the bunkers, the entrance to which is blocked, but all through Monday night (2) naval artillery and barrel artillery were firing. All day today, aviation has been working, dropping bombs,” Palamar said via videoconference.
Reuters was unable to independently verify his comments.
Images released on Sunday (1) show people evacuated from Mariupol arriving by bus in Benzimenne, about 25 kilometers from the besieged city. “It was two months of darkness,” one woman said of life hiding in the labyrinth of bunkers beneath the Azovstal steel mill.
An unknown number of Ukrainian civilians and forces are holed up at the Azovstal steelworks in the port city of Mariupol, ravaged by weeks of Russian bombing and where Moscow has claimed control.
Evacuations
The city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine is vitally important to Russia’s effort to secure a land corridor to the Crimean peninsula that Moscow annexed from Kiev in 2014.
Some groups of civilians left Azovstal over the weekend in an evacuation organized by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the first to leave since President Vladimir Putin ordered the factory’s barricade.
Despite this effort, there is no indication of a plan to withdraw Ukrainian forces hiding in Azovstal. These are believed to include members of the Azov regiment, the national guard, marines, border guards and other units.
Palamar said he hoped other countries would act as guarantors in an agreement to provide troops there with safe passage out of the steel mills.
“This situation that has now developed in Mariupol at the Azovstal plant is a big burden for the president and a big responsibility for him,” he said, referring to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who is in Kiev.
“As commander in chief and as president, he (Zelensky) is responsible not only for the civilians who stay here, but also for the military, who are responsible for the wounded soldiers who are dying here, who need emergency medical attention. Care, they need medicine, they need surgery,” he said.
Source: CNN Brasil
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