Rockets pound besieged steel plant after Mariupol ceasefire collapses
•First 100 civilians to flee finally reach safety •200 still trapped underground as Russia attacks
Russian rockets and artillery shells rained down on the besieged Azovstal steel works in Mariupol on Tuesday, after a ceasefire collapsed with up to 200 civilians still trapped in tunnels underneath the site.
Just over 100 exhausted Ukrainians, mainly women and children, reached the relative safety of Ukraine-controlled Zaporizhzhia after being brought out of the plant at the weekend in a deal brokered by the UN and the Red Cross.
“We had hoped that many more people would have been able to join the convoy and get out of hell. That is why we have mixed feelings,” said Pascal Hundt of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Alina Kozitskaya, who spent weeks sheltering in a basement with her bags packed waiting for a chance to escape, said: “I can’t believe I made it, we just want rest.”
Capt. Sviatoslav Palamar of Ukraine’s Azov Brigade, which has about 1,000 fighters defending the steel works, said Russia had pounded Azovstal with naval and barrel artillery through the night and dropped heavy bombs from planes.
“As of this moment, a powerful assault on the territory of the Azovstal
plant is underway with the support of armored vehicles, tanks, attempts to land on boats and a large number of infantry,” Palamar said.
The bloodiest fighting of the war has taken place in Mariupol, where 400,000 lived before Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24. The devastated city, now under Russian control, has endured weeks of siege and shelling, and about 100,000 civilians are still there.
“You wake up in the morning and you cry. You cry in the evening. I don’t know where to go at all,” said Mariupol resident Tatyana Bushlanova, sitting by a blackened apartment block as shells exploded near by.
Russia has turned its firepower on Ukraine’s east and south since failing to take Kyiv, the capital, in March. At least 10 people were killed and 15 wounded by Russian shelling of a coking plant in Avdiivka in the Donetsk region Tuesday. The Ukrainian president’s office said other areas of Donetsk were under constant fire.
Russian strikes have has also hit targets farther west in an attempt to limit Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, vital for its grain and metal exports, and to disrupt supplies of Western military equipment.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged a further $375 million in aid on Tuesday, including electronic warfare equipment and a counterbattery radar system.
“This is Ukraine’s finest hour, that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come,” Johnson told Ukraine’s parliament in a video address, adapting Winston Churchill’s words in 1940 when Britain repelled the threat of invasion by Nazi Germany.