The United Nations announced that a convoy with 127 civilians from the Mariupol steel plant and a nearby town arrived in a Ukrainian-controlled city.
A U.N. humanitarian official said on Tuesday that it had successfully evacuated some 101 people from the Azovstal steel plant, saying that most of the evacuees were in Zaporizhzhia, where they are receiving humanitarian assistance.
"Thanks to the operation, 101 women, men, children, and older persons could finally leave the bunkers below the Azovstal steelworks and see the daylight after two months," Osnat Lubrani, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said in a statement sent to journalists.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which was also involved in the safe passage operation, released a parallel statement saying some 100 people from the Mariupol plant area had reached Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday. Among them were some wounded, it added.
Meanwhile, Russian forces began storming the steel mill containing the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol, Ukrainian defenders said, just as scores of civilians evacuated from the bombed-out plant over the weekend reached relative safety in Ukrainian-held territory.
Osnat Lubrani, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said that thanks to the evacuation effort, "101 women, men, children and older persons could finally leave the bunkers below the Azovstal steelworks and see the daylight after two months."
One evacuee said she went to sleep there every night afraid she wouldn't wake up.
"You can’t imagine how scary it is when you sit in the shelter, in a wet and damp basement which is bouncing, shaking," Yelena Tsybulchenko said upon arriving in the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, in a convoy of buses and ambulances.
She added: "We were praying to God that missiles fly over our shelter, because if it hit the shelter, all of us would be done."
The news for those left behind was more grim. Ukrainian commanders said Russian forces backed by tanks began storming the sprawling plant, which includes a maze of tunnels and bunkers spread out over 11 square kilometers (4 square miles).
How many Ukrainian fighters were holed up inside was unclear, but the Russians put the number at about 2,000 in recent weeks, and 500 were reported to be wounded. A few hundred civilians also remained there, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
"We’ll do everything that’s possible to repel the assault, but we’re calling for urgent measures to evacuate the civilians that remain inside the plant and to bring them out safely," Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, said on the messaging app Telegram.
He added that throughout the night, the plant was hit with naval artillery fire and airstrikes. Two civilian women were killed and 10 civilians wounded, he said.
The U.N.'s Lubrani expressed hope for further evacuations but said none had been worked out.