Ukraine: All women, children, elderly evacuated from Azovstal

Kyiv, May 7 (EFE).- All of the women, children and elderly who remained inside the besieged Azovstal steel works in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol have been safely evacuated, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Saturday.

“This part of the Mariupol humanitarian operation is over,” she said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

“Today we managed to pull out 50 women, children and old people from Azovstal. We will continue with the evacuation operation tomorrow (Sunday) morning,” she wrote, possibly referring to non-elderly male civilians.

Russia’s official Tass news agency likewise reported that 50 people left the plant on Saturday.

The people who left the sprawling industrial complex Saturday are to be taken to Zaporizhzhia in Ukrainian-controlled territory, which was the destination for the majority of the roughly 160 earlier evacuees from Azovstal, though a few dozen opted to go to Russia.

Neither the United Nations nor the International Committee of the Red Cross, which organized the previous evacuations from Azovstal, had any comment on Saturday’s developments at the complex.

Azovstal is the last redoubt of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov. EFE int/dr