Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed dozens of civilians have been evacuated from a steel plant in the bombed-out southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
Mr Zelenskyy said on social media that a group of 100 people were on their way from the Azovstal steelworks to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Images showed a group of around 50 civilians arriving in the village of Bezimenne in the Donetsk Region, around 30 kilometres east of Mariupol, with Ukrainian number plates in a convoy with Russian forces and vehicles with United Nations symbols.
Russia declared victory in Mariupol on April 21 even as hundreds of Ukrainian troops and civilians took shelter in the city's Azovstal steel works, a vast Soviet-era complex with a network of bunkers and tunnels, where they have been trapped with little food, water or medicine.
Mr Zelenskyy indicated that plans are underway for a Monday rendezvous with the evacuees in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia that has previously been a staging post for those fleeing Mariupol.
Later on Sunday, one of the plant’s defenders said Russian forces resumed shelling the plant as soon as the evacuation of a group of civilians was completed.
As many as 100,000 people are believed to still be in blockaded Mariupol, including up to 1,000 civilians who were hunkered down with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters beneath the Soviet-era steel plant — the only part of the city not occupied by the Russians.
Negotiations to evacuate the civilians had repeatedly broken down in recent weeks, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other.
A spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said a "safe passage operation" had started on Saturday and was being coordinated with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Russia and Ukraine.
He said no further details could be released so as not to jeopardise the safety of evacuees and the convoy.
The Mayor of Mariupol declared a period of silence, pending official statements about the evacuations.
The siege of Mariupol, in which Russian forces battled Ukrainian fighters, has turned the port city into a wasteland with an unknown death toll and thousands trying to survive with minimal water, sanitation or food.
'Can't imagine what we have been through'
Cowering in the labyrinth of Soviet-era bunkers far beneath the vast Azovstal steel works, Natalia Usmanova felt her heart would stop she was so terrified as Russian bombs rained down on Mariupol, sprinkling her with concrete dust.
"You just can't imagine what we have been through — the terror," Ms Usmanova said.
Ms Usmanova, 37, spoke to Reuters on Sunday after being evacuated from the plant, a sprawling complex founded under Joseph Stalin and designed with a subterranean network of bunkers and tunnels to withstand attack.
"I feared that the bunker would not withstand it — I had terrible fear," Ms Usmanova said, describing the time sheltering underground.
She recalled the lack of oxygen in the shelters and the fear that had gripped the lives of people hunkered down there.
Ms Usmanova was among dozens of civilians evacuated from the plant in Mariupol to the village of Bezimenne.
She said she joked with her husband on the bus ride out that they would no longer have to go to the lavatory with a torch.
"We didn't see the sun for so long," she said.
Water shortage, smell of decomposing bodies, fighter says
Sviastoslav Palamar — the deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, which is helping defend the last section of Mariupol not occupied by the Russians — said he was glad evacuations had begun.
He said he hoped evacuations from the Azovstal steel mill would continue until everyone in the plant, civilians and soldiers, had been freed.
"It's been difficult even to reach some of the wounded inside the plant," he told The Associated Press in an interview from Mariupol on Sunday.
"There's rubble. We have no special equipment. It's hard for soldiers to pick up slabs weighing tons only with their arms," he said.
The Azovstal plant is strewn with mines, rockets, artillery shells and unexploded cluster ordnance, he said.
He said the presence of children and civilians makes it harder to fight, and there are many injured people in the plant.
There's not enough water, he said, and the air smells of decomposing bodies.
The fighters in the plant will continue to resist until they receive an order not to, he said.
"The best solution in this situation is our evacuation. Does it make a sense to continue carrying this massacre?" he asked.
The standoff at the steel plant saved many lives, he said.
"Because, if we hadn't done this, the front line would be much bigger. The front line would be in another area."
Russia reports fire at military facility
One person was injured in a fire on a Russian defence ministry facility in the southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, the area's governor said on Sunday.
Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a local resident suffered minor injuries and his life was not in danger. There were no immediate comments from the defence ministry.
Images posted to social media showed a large funnel of smoke rising above the ground.
Separately, the governor of the Kursk region which also shares a border with Ukraine said that a railway bridge had been damaged on a line used by freight trains.
Speaking in a video posted on his Telegram channel, Governor Roman Starovoit called the incident an act of sabotage.
Russia last month accused Ukraine of a helicopter attack on a fuel depot in Belgorod, for which Kyiv denied responsibility, as well as shelling villages and firing missiles at an ammunition depot.
Other Russian regions that share a border with Ukraine have also reported cross-border shelling incidents since Moscow sent thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24 in what it called a "special military operation".
ABC/wires
