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Seven buses and dozens of cars transporting evacuees, mostly from the devastated, besieged southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, reached the city of Zaporizhzhia in an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) convoy on Wednesday. Lucile Marbeau, spokesperson for the ICRC’s regional delegation, spoke to FRANCE 24 from eastern Ukraine’s Dnipro about the process of getting these people to safety.
“Unfortunately we weren’t able to access directly Mariupol, so we were 20 kilometres around; during five days we were in the area – this was the first cross line operation that the International Committee Red Cross was able to carry out,” Lucile Marbeau, spokesperson for the Red Cross regional delegation, told FRANCE 24 from eastern Ukraine‘s Dnipro.
“So what we saw is basically the needs of the people who are able – there’s a trickle of people actually –being able to get out of Mariupol. And we were able also to have a convoy also leaving on Tuesday, arriving on Wednesday […] with seven buses, with 350 civilians in it, mostly families, elderly people – and also a convoy of cars, cars basically who have been joining us through the convoy where we could really see what the Red Cross represents in terms of protection,” Marbeau continued.
“We estimate that in the end we were able to bring to safety around 800 to 1000 civilians; what we saw of course is that they are exhausted psychologically, physically.”
Click on the video player above to watch Marbeau speaking to FRANCE 24.
