Ukraine says seven humanitarian corridors planned for evacuations on Saturday
02 April, 2022
Seven humanitarian corridors to evacuate people from Ukraine's besieged regions are planned for Saturday (Apr 2), Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
The planned corridors include one for people evacuating by private transport from the city of Mariupol and by buses for Mariupol residents out of the city of Berdyansk, Vereshchuk said.
An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelesnskyy said on Saturday that the Ukrainian delegation has reached an agreement in Istanbul during the Ukraine -Russia peace talks to provide evacuations. Oleksiy Arestovych told Ukraine television: "I think that today or maybe tomorrow we will hear good news regarding the evacuation of the inhabitants of Mariupol."
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent a team on Friday to lead a convoy of about 54 Ukrainian buses and other private vehicles out of the city, but they turned back, saying conditions made it impossible to proceed. They were due to try again on Saturday.
Encircled since the early days of Russia's five-week-old invasion, Mariupol has been Moscow's main target in the southeastern region of Donbas. Tens of thousands of people are trapped in the city with scant access to food and water.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com