We’re getting some more detail about today’s evacuation of several civilians from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, the UN’s team leader for the evacuation, said it was a complicated operation.
“You are trying to get people out in an active conflict zone where there are women and children who’ve been living underground for two months and you’re trying to lure them out to safety into an environment they don’t understand.”
Several mines had to be cleared before the evacuation could begin, he says.
“There was then some mortar fire, I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know who fired it. It stopped fairly quickly.
“They were horrified. They’ve been underground for two months and they haven’t seen news,” he says.
“There was a six-month-old baby there who had never seen grass, he’d been born during the winter and he was astonished how green the grass was.”
Stampa says the UN is prepared to work with both sides to evacuate civilians, adding that he hopes today’s operation is the first of many.
