[News] Ukraine: Civilians evacuated from two areas under attack

[Mr.Talha]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60661744

 

 

Civilians are being evacuated from two devastated areas of Ukraine after Russia agreed to pause attacks.

A convoy of buses and cars carrying mostly foreign students left the northern city of Sumy, while dozens of people left Irpin near Kyiv.

Previous evacuations have failed, with Russia accused of shelling routes.

The UN says more than two million people have now fled Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion nearly two weeks ago.

Evacuations from Sumy began on Tuesday morning, with buses heading towards the city of Poltava, further south and away from the front lines.

Trapped Nigerian on friendship and terror in Sumy
Indian and Chinese students were among those evacuated. The Indian government said all of its 694 students in the city had left with the convoy.

As he awaited evacuation, Mohammad Mahtab Raza, a 23-year-old medical student from India, told the BBC he had spent days sheltering from Russian strikes in a basement bunker.

"All my family call every day and ask: 'When will you come back, what is your situation?' Right now, with my mother and brother [I'm] just lying, [saying] 'we are fine, everything is good, we will come really soon'," he said.

Another medical student, 22-year-old Anastasia, was still weighing up whether to go.

"Now I'm deciding whether or not to leave my family, because [my] grandparents decided not to go and my mother cannot leave them, and now I need to decide to leave them alone, or to stay."

In Sumy, the ceasefire appears to have largely held but other Ukrainian cities have continued to come under heavy bombardment from Russian forces.

Ukrainian officials said an evacuation route from Mariupol was being shelled in violation of the ceasefire agreement.