A statement issued by the “Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories in Ukraine” stated that Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk sent a message in this regard to Michel Olivier Lacharite, head of emergency programs in the humanitarian organization and head of its mission in Ukraine.
The ministry said in the statement that it “calls on Doctors Without Borders to organize a mission to evacuate the defenders of Mariupol and Azovstal and provide care for the wounded, whose human rights have been violated by the Russian Federation.”
She added that the fighters in the huge industrial site “remained for 72 days in a row under the continuous bombardment and attacks of the Russian army,” and that due to “the lack of medicine, water and food, the wounded soldiers are dying of gangrene and sepsis.”
Earlier Saturday, Kyiv announced that all women, children and elderly civilians who were hiding with the fighters were evacuated from the basements of the gigantic industrial site, the last Ukrainian pocket of resistance against the Russian army in the devastated port city of Mariupol.
On Friday, 50 civilians were also able to leave the steel plant in the southeastern city on the coast of the Azov Sea.
These operations, which have been taking place for a week under the auspices of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have enabled the evacuation of about 500 civilians, according to Kyiv.
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