Conflicts & War

1,665 people evacuated from Mariupol city, Zaporizhzhia region

Odesa, Ukraine, Mar 30 (EFE).- A total of 1,665 people have been evacuated from the besieged city of Mariupol and other nearby towns, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said Wednesday.

Iryna Vereshchuk, also minister for reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, reported early morning that the evacuation has been completed.

“Three agreed humanitarian corridors on their own transport reached 1,665 people (936 Mariupol and 729 residents of Zaporizhzhia region),” the minister confirmed on Facebook.

The evacuations took place on the same day that Russia and Ukraine resumed their negotiations in Istanbul.

The evacuations from Zaporizhzhia region were from Berdiansk, Melitopol, Enerhodar, Polohy, Orikhiv, Huliaypole and Vasylivka.

In the latter town, the minister said, Russian troops blocked “columns of buses for evacuation and trucks with humanitarian aid” as well as people using private transport to travel the route towards the city of Zaporizhzhia from Tokmak and Enerhodar.

Vereshchuk said that, according to data from the Mariupol city hall, some 75,000 residents of the city have been evacuated to Zaporizhzhia so far.

The port city of Mariupol, which had a pre-war population of half a million people, has been one of the Ukrainian towns that has suffered the most from Russian attacks since Moscow invaded the country on Feb. 14.

This industrial town on the shores of the Sea of Azov has been besieged for weeks, and the few remaining residents, some 160,000 according to the authorities, do not have access to basic goods such as drinking water, gas or heating. EFE

int-rml/tw

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