Servicemen of Donetsk People’s Republic militia walk past damaged vehicles during a heavy fighting in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol
The mayor of Mariupol, which is still holding out from falling against Russian forces, has called for a full evacuation of the port city, which he said still had about 100,000 Ukrainians there, as satellite images released this week show a mass grave site nearby.
“We need only one thing — the full evacuation of the population. About 100,000 people remain in Mariupol,” the city’s Mayor Vadym Boichenko said, who is no longer in the city himself, according to Reuters.
Those calls were also reiterated by Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk in a Facebook post on Friday.
“Once again, we appeal to world leaders and the world community to immediately make all efforts to open a humanitarian corridor from [Azovstal] for women, children and elderly persons,” Vereshchuk said.
The Ukrainian official said that, in addition to the Ukrainian forces that were there in Mariupol, there were also about 1,000 civilians still situated there.
“There are corridors for surrendering to captive. The Russians opened one, but we don’t need it. Because our military don’t want to surrender to them,” she said. “There are humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians from the war zone. We need such a corridor from Azovstal to evacuate women, children and elderly people from there.”
Ukrainian authorities say that a group of soldiers and civilians remain in the steel complex, despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the besieged port city has been “liberated,” according to Reuters.
The development comes as space technology company Maxar Technologies released satellite footage on Thursday showing the emergence of a mass grave site in Manhush, Ukraine, which lies over 10 miles away from Mariupol.
News reports have said that the bodies of the dead from Mariupol have been brought by Russian forces to Manhush to be buried there, Maxar noted.