'We want to go home' - women and children in Azovstal steelworks bunker
Women and children said to be holding out in the underground bunkers of the Azovstal steel complex in besieged Mariupol, said they wanted to return home to their families, in a video uploaded by Ukraine's Azov Battalion on Saturday (April 23).
The Azov video showed men in uniform walking inside a location said to be a bunker in the Azovstal steel complex. Letters on the wall of one corridor said 'Children' as soldiers walked in and announced they brought food and gifts for the children seen inside a room.
The video showed women wearing the Azovstal uniform design, which Reuters verified, matched in file images.
Reuters could not independently verify where or when the video was shot.
A young girl wearing a grey hoodie, who did not identify herself, said: "We have been playing on the phone but we want to go home, we want to see the sun."
A woman holding a toddler said they were running out of food and she hoped to be evacuated.
A boy that was not identified in the video, said he had been at the bunker for two months.
"(I hope) we can leave here and see the sun because we've been sitting here for two months already. I want to see the sun because here it's dim, not like outside. When our houses are rebuilt we can live in peace. Let Ukraine win because Ukraine is our native home," he said.
The Azov Battalion was set up in 2014 as a group comprising pro-Ukrainian nationalist volunteers who fought against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv later incorporated the Azov fighters as a regiment in its National Guard. Russia accuses the group of being a neo-Nazi organisation, an allegation Ukraine rejects as pure propaganda.
The mayor of Mariupol appealed on Friday (April 22) for the "full evacuation" of the devastated southern Ukrainian city which President Vladimir Putin says is now controlled by Russian forces.
Mayor Vadym Boichenko, who is no longer in Mariupol, did not provide any update on any fighting in or around the port city on the Sea of Azov.
On Saturday Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that if all went as planned, evacuations from the besieged city of Mariupol would start at noon (0900 GMT).