Ukraine is hoping for the opening of the Mariupol “humanitarian corridor”.

FILE PHOTO: The aftermath of Russian artillery shelling a residential area in Mariupol where a missile hit a house, according to Ukraine’s Armed Forces, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Mariupol, Ukraine, can be seen in this screenshot from a video uploaded to the social media on March 10, 2022. Armed Forces of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS

March 11, 2022

By Pavel Polityuk

LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukraine hopes a “humanitarian corridor” will be successfully opened to allow civilians to exit the besieged southern port city of Mariupol on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

In the strategically important city of over 400,000, residents have huddled under fire and without electricity and water for more than a week, and attempts to arrange a local truce and a safe escape outside have repeatedly failed.

Three people were killed in an attack on a hospital in Mariupol this week, Ukrainian officials said.

“We hope that 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 Russian forces, which entered the country on February 24 invaded Ukraine.

A convoy of about 225 people in 50 cars and a bus made its way from the city of Enerhodar to nearby Zaporizhia in eastern Ukraine, the regional governor of Zaporizhia said.

“We are waiting in Zaporizhzhia,” Governor Oleksandr Starukh said on the Telegram messaging app.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it would open humanitarian corridors from Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Chernihiv.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that not a single civilian was able to leave Mariupol on Thursday, although Ukrainian authorities managed to evacuate nearly 40,000 people from five other cities.

He blamed the Russian shelling for the failure of the evacuation attempt from Mariupol.

Russia has blamed Ukraine for collapsing humanitarian corridors and denies attacking civilians. Moscow is calling its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and depose leaders it calls neo-Nazis.

(Additional reporting by Natallia Zinets and Max Hunder, editors of Timothy Heritage)