World News: Russia unleashes more rockets at steel plant – Gulf Digital News

World News: Russia unleashes more rockets at steel plant – Gulf Digital News

KYIV: Russia unleashed rockets yesterday on an encircled steel works in Mariupol, Ukraine’s last redoubt in the port city, after a ceasefire broke down with some civilians still trapped beneath the sprawling site despite a UN-brokered evacuation.

However, scores of evacuees who managed to leave under UN and Red Cross auspices at the weekend after cowering for weeks under the Azovstal plant finally reached the relative safety of Ukraine-controlled Zaporizhzhia.

“We would have 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,” Pascal Hundt from the International Committee of the Red Cross told journalists by Zoom.

Weary-looking people, including children and pensioners, clambered off buses after escaping the ruins of their home town in southeast Ukraine where Russia now claims control.

“We had said goodbye to life, we didn’t think anyone knew we were there,” said Valentina Sytnykova, 70, who said she sheltered in the plant for two months with her son and 10-year-old granddaughter.

Russia has turned its heaviest firepower on Ukraine’s east and south since failing to take Kyiv, the capital, in March.

But it has also struck targets much further west in a drive to limit Ukraine’s