Almost 30,000 evacuated on Tuesday from Ukrainian cities

Almost 30,000 people were evacuated from Ukrainian cities on Tuesday amid the ongoing Russian invasion, a Ukrainian official said.

Senior Ukrainian presidential official Kyrylo Tymoshenko said around 29,000 people used humanitarian corridors to leave Ukrainian cities, Reuters reported.

Using private cars, around 20,000 left the port city of Mariupol, which has suffered numerous bombings and thousands of casualties in recent days, according to the official. 

This comes after the International Committee of the Red Cross warned on Sunday that a “worst-case scenario” awaited residents of Mariupol unless life-saving aid was sent into the city and a “concrete, precise, actionable agreement” was reached on evacuation routes.

Ukrainian officials have previously accused Russia of blocking and shelling humanitarian corridors despite agreements between the two countries.

More than 100,000 people have already been evacuated from cities in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials.

Since the beginning of the conflict nearly three weeks ago, more than 3 million people have fled the country, with Poland taking in the majority of the refugees. This marks one of the biggest migration crises Europe has seen since World War II.