Mariupol mayor urges residents to leave

Mariupol mayor Vadym Boychenko is urging residents to leave the city.

Boychenko appealed Wednesday to people who had already left Mariupol to contact relatives still in the city and urge them to evacuate. He said 200,000 people had already left the city, which had a pre-war population of more than 400,000.

“Do not be frightened and evacuate to Zaporizhzhia, where you can receive all the help you need -- food, medicine, essentials -- and the main thing is that you will be in safety,” he wrote in a statement issued by the city council.

Boychenko said buses would be used for the evacuation and there will be three pickup points, one of them near the Azovstal steel mill which has become Ukrainian forces’ last stronghold in the city. Many previous evacuation efforts relied on civilians being able to leave in private cars after efforts to bring buses from Ukraine-held territory into the city failed.