After meeting in Kiev on Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that intensive talks are underway to evacuate people from a steel mill in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where fighters and civilians are besieged.
Guterres met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which Putin agreed “in principle” to include the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross in the evacuation of the Azovstal power plant.
Mariupol city council said the city’s nearly 100,000 residents were in “mortal danger” from the Russian bombings and poor sanitation, and said there was a “catastrophic” shortage of drinking water and food.
“Mariupol is a crisis in crisis. Thousands of civilians need help. Many are elderly, needing medical care or have limited mobility,” Guterres told reporters after meeting with Zelenskiy.
“They need an escape route away from the apocalypse.”
Referring to the possibility of a humanitarian corridor for the hundreds of civilians who will still be in Azovstal, coordinated by the UN and the Red Cross, Guterres said: “As we speak, there are intense discussions to advance this proposal and make it a reality. We are doing everything we can to make it happen. I won’t go into any comments,” he said.
On April 21, nearly two months after the strategic port city was besieged, Russia declared victory at Mariupol, but the remaining Ukrainian forces still hold out in a large underground complex below Azovstal, where civilians also take refuge.
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source: Noticias
