“A powerful assault on the territory of Azovstal is currently underway, with the support of armored vehicles, tanks, with attempts to land troops, with the help of boats and a large number of elements of infantry,” Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov regiment, said in a video message on Telegram. The industrial complex had been besieged for several weeks and represented the last focus of resistance of the Ukrainian army in Mariupol, in the south-east of Ukraine. “We will do everything to repel it,” he added, also calling for “immediate measures to evacuate civilians” still holed up with Ukrainian fighters.
Powerful bombardments the day before the assault
He also said that heavy shelling had taken place the night before the attack, which killed two women and injured “about 10 civilians”. “Last night, enemy naval and land artillery shelled the Azovstal factory, very heavy bombs were dropped,” he added.
Vadim Astafiev, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said earlier on Tuesday that “units of the Russian army and the Donetsk People’s Republic, using artillery and aircraft, are starting to destroy (the ) firing positions” of Ukrainian fighters from Azovstal. In a speech taken up by the Russian agencies, Vadim Astafiev accused the Azov regiment of having “used” the ceasefire, declared to evacuate civilians, to get out of the basements of the steelworks and “to take positions of shooting on the territory and in the buildings of the factory”.
101 civilians evacuated
At the same time, the UN announced the “successful” evacuation of 101 civilians stuck for weeks in the Azovstal complex. “I am happy and relieved to confirm that 101 civilians have been successfully evacuated from the Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol,” UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine Osnat Lubrani said in a statement. On Twitter, the coordinator posted a photograph of her in front of a convoy of more than a dozen buses stopped on a road.
“People I have traveled with have told me heartbreaking stories of the hell they have been through. I am thinking of the people who remain trapped. We will do everything in our power to help them,” a- she writes.