(Reuters) – People are still only able to flee the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol on foot or by private car as efforts to organise mass evacuations by bus to safer parts of Ukraine have failed, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
Efforts to evacuate civilians – some with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – have repeatedly broken down, with both sides blaming each other.
In an online post, Vereshchuk said seven buses trying to get to Mariupol had not managed to make its way through a Russian blockade. Russia’s defence ministry said Ukrainian forces had “cynically disrupted” the evacuation effort, Tass news agency cited a senior official as saying.
Speaking earlier on national television, Vereshchuk said buses could not reach the first part of the evacuation route from Mariupol, which is “nearly 80 km (50 miles)- people have to either walk or find a way to make this journey in a private car”.
(Reporting by Max Hunder and David Ljunggren; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Chris Reese and Alistair Bell)
