Zelensky accuses Russia of ‘attack’ on humanitarian corridor in Mariupol

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This handout video grab taken and released by the Ukraine Presidency press service on March 7, 2022 shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaking in the capital Kyiv. – President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 8, 2022, denounced what he called unkept “promises” by the West to protect Ukraine from Russian attacks. “It’s been 13 days we’ve been hearing promises, 13 days we’ve been told we’ll be helped in the air, that there will be planes, that they will be delivered to us,” Zelensky said on a video broadcast on Telegram. (Photo by Handout / UKRAINE PRESIDENCY / AFP)

KYIV, Ukraine (AFP) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky Thursday said around 100,000 people had evacuated the country’s cities in two days, but accused Russian forces of targeting a humanitarian corridor in the city of Mariupol.

Zelensky said he decided to send a convoy of trucks into the besieged port city with food, water and medicine.

But “the occupiers launched a tank attack exactly where this corridor was supposed to be”, he said in a video statement, describing it as “outright terror”.

The Ukrainian leader said that, of the around 100,000 people who had been able to leave other Ukrainian cities via humanitarian corridors over the past two days, some 40,000 had fled on Thursday alone.

This video grab from a handout footage taken and released by the the National Police of Ukraine on March 9, 2022, shows damaged buildings of a children’s hospital, destroyed cars and debris on ground following a Russian air strike in the southeastern city of Mariupol. – International leaders and Ukraine accused Russia of a “barbaric” attack on the hospital, as civilians continued to bear the brunt of the conflict two weeks into Moscow’s invasion. (Photo by Handout / National Police of Ukraine / AFP)

Ukraine has accused Russia of carrying out an air strike on Wednesday on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, a strategic port on the Azov Sea, killing three people, including a young girl.

Moscow Thursday promised to open humanitarian corridors every day to allow Ukrainians to flee onto its soil, but Kyiv has previously rejected evacuation routes leading into Russia.

© Agence France-Presse