All women, children and elderly civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol, Ukraine's deputy prime minister said on Saturday, despite what military officers said was an ongoing Russian assault at the plant.
"This part of the Mariupol humanitarian operation is over," Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
The Soviet-era steel mill, the last holdout in Mariupol for Ukrainian forces, has emerged as a symbol of resistance to the wider Russian effort to capture swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine in the 10-week-old war.
Under heavy bombardment, fighters and civilians have been trapped for weeks in deep bunkers and tunnels that criss-cross the site, with little food, water or medicine.
Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery tried again on Saturday to storm Azovstal, Ukraine's military command said, part of a ferocious assault to dislodge the last Ukrainian defenders in the strategic port city on the Azov Sea.
Weeks of Russian bombardment have left Mariupol in ruins and the steel mill has been largely destroyed. Several groups of civilians have left the sprawling complex over the past week during pauses in fighting.
Earlier on Saturday, Russia's Interfax news agency cited Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine's Donetsk region as saying 50 more people had been evacuated from the besieged steelworks.
However, by 1600 GMT, Reuters journalists had not seen any sign of their arrival at a reception centre in separatist-controlled territory near Mariupol.
The separatists said a total of 176 civilians had now been evacuated from the plant.
Evacuations of civilians began last weekend from the Azovstal plant, brokered by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They were halted during the week by renewed fighting.
Earlier this week, the city's mayor estimated that 200 civilians were trapped at the plant.
It was not clear after the deputy prime minister's statement on Saturday if civilian men were still in the complex.
On Friday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a late-night video address that Ukraine was working on a diplomatic effort to save fighters barricaded inside the steel works.
The fighters have vowed not to surrender. It was unclear how many remained there, and Ukrainian officials fear Russian forces want to wipe them out by Monday, when Moscow commemorates the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. read more
