LVIV, e: e hopes a "humanitarian corridor" will be opened successfully for civilians to leave the besieged southern port city of Mariupol on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
Residents have been cowering under fire, and without power or water, in the strategically important city of over 400,000 people for more than a week and attempts to arrange a local cease-fire and safe passage out have failed repeatedly.
Three people were killed in an attack on a hospital in Mariupol this week, ian officials said.
"We hope it (the corridor) will work today," Vereshchuk said in a televised statement in which she said she hoped several other humanitarian corridors would also be opened by n forces who invaded e on Feb. 24.
A convoy of about 225 people in 50 cars and a bus set out from the city of Enerhodar, heading to nearby Zaporizhzhia in eastern e, Zaporizhzhia's regional governor said.
"We are waiting in Zaporizhzhia," Governor Oleksandr Starukh said on the Telegram messaging app.
's defense ministry said it would open humanitarian corridors from Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Chernihiv.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that not a single civilian had been able to leave Mariupol on Thursday although ian authorities had managed to evacuate almost 40,000 people from five other cities.
He blamed n shelling for the failure of the evacuation attempt from Mariupol.
has blamed e for the collapse of humanitarian corridors and denies targeting civilians. Moscow calls its actions in e a "special operation" to disarm e and unseat leaders it calls neo-Nazis.
ns keep pressure on Mariupol after hospital attack; massive convoy breaks up 7 killed by shelling near e's Mariupol