From Ukraine's besieged cities, 35,000 escaped via humanitarian corridors: Zelensky
Refugees Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, said Wednesday that at least 35,000 civilians had been evacuated from besieged cities.
According to a video address, the Ukrainian leader made late Wednesday, three humanitarian corridors had enabled residents of Sumy, Enerhodar, and the area around Kyiv to flee.
He said he hoped that the evacuations would continue on Thursday, noting that three more routes were set to open out of Mariupol, Volnovakha in the southeast, and Izium in eastern Ukraine.
As a result of Moscow and Kyiv's agreement on Wednesday, more corridors were opened, offering a sliver of hope to civilians trapped in bombarded cities.
More than 5,000 people were evacuated from Sumy, aday earlier, a city of 250,000 near the Russian border that has been the scene of heavy fighting.
As per an Interfax Ukraine news agency report,around 48,000 Ukrainians have been evacuated through humanitarian corridors. The reportcites a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president`s office, said 43,000 people had left the city of Sumy, 3,500 from the Kyiv region and 1,000 from Energodar.
However, the evacuation of Mariupol, which has been under Russian siege for days, has failed on several occasions, with both Kyiv and Moscow blaming each other.
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Phone signals are down, effectively cutting off the industrial city from the world. Hundreds of thousands of residents of Mariupol under bombardment have been sheltering without water or power for more than a week.
Russia struck a children's hospital in the city on Wednesday, provoking renewed global outrage two weeks after Moscow invaded its former Soviet neighbour.
In the siege, which has lasted more than a week, more than 1,200 civilians have been killed, according to Mariupol's mayor.
According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the number of refugees resulting from this conflict lies somewhere between 2.1 million and 2.2 million.
