According to Reuters, the Red Cross said it was not allowed to bring humanitarian aid into Mariupol. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister says 100,000 people need emergency evacuation from the city, Ukrenform wrote.
There is great tension over whether civilians will be able to get out of the shelled port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine on Friday.
According to AFP, the Red Cross said it was not yet clear whether the evacuation would take place today. According to Reuters, the Red Cross says the evacuation consists of 54 buses – and that high-ranking authorities from both Russia and Ukraine have approved the evacuation plan.
Reuters also quoted the Red Cross as saying that they were not allowed to bring humanitarian aid into the city. CNN quoted an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol as saying that they have not received any emergency aid so far.
– The city is still closed to the entrance and it is very dangerous to leave the city in a private car. Since yesterday, the occupiers have categorically not allowed emergency aid, even in small quantities, to enter the city, Counselor Petro Andryushenko wrote on Telegram, according to CNN.
1 of 3Photo: Alexander Ermoshenko/Reuters
Planning an evacuation convoy
Earlier, the BBC reported that the Red Cross said they were planning the largest relief and evacuation convoy to the city on Friday.
A convoy of the Red Cross with three cars left Zaporizhia in the direction of Mariupol, on Friday morning, in an attempt to facilitate the evacuation of the city.
Zaporizhia is located in the southeast of Ukraine on the Dnipro River, about 70 kilometers from the city of Dnipro.
They believe that the role of the convoy will be to facilitate and follow the evacuation of civilians from the cities – which will be carried out by buses sent by the Ukrainian authorities.
The evacuation from Mariupol repeatedly failed due to the fresh fighting.
accusations
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshuk said that about 75,000 people have been evacuated from Mariupol and 100,000, including children, women, the elderly and people with special needs, need urgent evacuation from the city, according to the Ukrinform news agency.
Ukraine accuses Russian forces of stopping 45 buses evacuating civilians from the port city of Mariupol. Vereshuk also claims that the Russians seized 12 Ukrainian trucks that were to provide emergency aid in Melitopol. These contained 14 tons of food and medicine, according to her CNN.
Late Tuesday night, the United Nations told Reuters that several thousand civilians were killed in the bombed city of Mariupol after Russia invaded the country nearly six weeks ago.
Since the start of the war, the coastal city has been described as one of the cities most affected by the Russian attacks. The powerful stories came in a row:
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