© KEYSTONE/EPA/ARKADY BUDNITSKY
At least 35,000 civilians were evacuated Wednesday from several besieged Ukrainian towns, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced. Humanitarian corridors have been set up in Sumy, Enerhodar and areas close to the capital Kiev.
The leader said he hoped evacuations would continue on Thursday, with the opening of three other humanitarian corridors from the towns of Mariupol, besieged for nine days, Volnovakha (southeast) and Izium (east).
The evacuations came after an agreement on Wednesday between Moscow and Kyiv to open humanitarian corridors, offering hope to civilians trapped in bombed cities.
More than 5,000 people had been evacuated the day before from Sumy, a city of 250,000 inhabitants near the Russian border. But evacuations from the port city of Mariupol had repeatedly failed in recent days, with Kiev and Moscow blaming each other for the failures.
A facility housing a pediatric hospital and a maternity ward was hit by Russian shelling in Mariupol on Wednesday. The nine days of siege of the city have already killed 1,207, the town hall said on Telegram on Wednesday evening.