Lviv, Ukraine, Renewed efforts to evacuate civilians from besieged and bombarded Ukrainian cities were underway today as authorities seek to rescue people from increasingly dire conditions. Days of shelling have largely cut residents of the southern city of Mariupol off from the outside world and forced them to scavenge for food and water.
Authorities announced another cease-fire to allow civilians to escape from Mariupol, Sumy in the northeast, Enerhodar in the south, Volnovakha in the southeast, Izyum in the east, and several towns in the region around the capital, Kyiv.
Previous attempts to establish safe evacuation corridors have largely failed due to attacks by Russian or Ukrainian forces, and there were few details on today’s new effort. It was not clear if anyone was able to leave Mariupol, but some people did start streaming out of Kyiv’s suburbs, even as air raid sirens repeatedly went off in the capital and explosions could be heard there.
Mariupol, which nearly half of the population of 430,000 is hoping to flee, has been surrounded by Russian forces for days. Thousands huddle in basements, sheltering from the Russian shells pounding this strategic port on the Azov Sea, the Associated Press (AP) news reported.
Source: Oman News Agency