Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine (AFP) – Tired, shivering and traveling in cars with broken windscreens or no windows, some of the first evacuees from Ukraine’s besieged Mariupol moved on Tuesday to the nearest safe city of Zaporizhzhya.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram that about 20,000 people managed to leave the besieged port city on Tuesday via a humanitarian corridor.
“It’s the first time I’ve been able to breathe in weeks,” said Mykola, a father of two, with blankets, shoes and other hastily packed items in his car.
His family was one of about 570 carloads reaching Zaporizhia, about 250 kilometers (155 mi) to the northwest.
Tymoshenko said the people in the rest of the cars were forced to spend the night on the way.
Arriving in small batches, private vehicles with scraps of white material tied to wing mirrors were pulled into the car park of a shopping center on the outskirts of the city, which is now home to displaced people. There is a registration center.
He described a harrowing journey, forced to drive off-road to avoid Russian troops and outposts and face the constant threat of enemy fire along the way.
People cover a gunfight inside the entrance of an apartment building in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 13, 2022. (Evgeny Maloletka / AP)
Mykola, who asked not to give his full name because he cannot flee the country, said he had to help his wife and two young children with the help of the Ukrainian military to pass through a mine, which is just 40 kilometers from Zaporozhye. (25 miles) away. ,
“As we passed by, there was a burnt car. Soldiers said a woman was blown away by a mine just an hour before we reached there,” he said.
The city of Zaporizhzhya is the first safe port of call for those fleeing Mariupol, many of whom are in the west of the country and perhaps on their way to Poland or other border countries.
Russian Army tanks land on a street on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo / Evgeny Maloletka)
According to the city council, Tuesday’s evacuation was much larger than Monday, when a group of 160 cars left Mariupol.
The first successful evacuation came after several failed attempts as Russian forces besieged the port city on the Sea of Azov earlier this month.
‘corpse in the street’
Dimitro, who arrived in Zaporizhzhya on Tuesday with his wife and two young children, said it was his third attempt to leave Mariupol with his family.
On previous attempts, he said, he was asked by the Russian military to “go home again” with tanks and machine guns.
His hands turned black from dirt, Dimitro said he hadn’t washed in two weeks and that the inhabitants of Mariupol were forced to drink water from the river.
A man looks at a burnt apartment building that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (AP / Evgeny Maloletka)
He said that he robbed food shops to feed his children and grandparents.
“We lived underground and if it was -4 degrees Celsius, it was a good temperature,” he said.
Mariupol is facing a humanitarian catastrophe, according to aid agencies, as heavy bombing has left nearly 400,000 residents with running water or a lack of heating and food.
According to city officials, more than 2,100 Mariupol residents have been killed since the Russian invasion.
“Sometimes the dead bodies lie on the road for three days. The smell is in the air and you don’t want your kids to smell it,” Dimitro said.
Bodies are placed in a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022, as people cannot bury their dead due to heavy shelling by Russian forces. (Evgeny Maloletka/AP)
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Tuesday that the situation in Mariupol “remains critical” and that it has not been able to deliver aid to the city.
“The bottom line is that hundreds of thousands of people are still suffering,” the ICRC said.
In total, about 29,000 people managed to use humanitarian routes to escape the besieged cities on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said.