Roughly 100 civilians have been evacuated from a besieged steel plant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday, according to AFP.
The UN said earlier that a "safe passage operation" was going on at the Azovstal plant, the last holdout in the port city that has endured a Russian blockade since the conflict began on February 24, while the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was "currently participating" in the operation.
Russia's defense ministry gave a lower figure of 80 civilians, adding, "Those who wished to leave for areas controlled by the Kyiv regime were handed over to UN and ICRC (Red Cross) representatives."
Neither the UN or the ICRC have said how many civilians they are transporting and it was not immediately clear why the sides had given different figures.
"Today we finally managed to start the evacuation of people from Azovstal," Zelenskyy said in a video address, adding that they were due to arrive in Ukraine-controlled Zaporizhzhia on Monday.
"For the first time there were two days of real ceasefire on this territory. More than a hundred civilians have already been evacuated -- women and children first of all," he added.
The Ukrainian President said he hoped the evacuations could continue on Monday.
Two weeks ago, Russia's defense ministry issued an ultimatum to Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol to surrender or "face certain death."
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal later vowed to fight to the end in Mariupol.
"The city still has not fallen," Shmyhal said hours after Moscow's deadline had passed, adding, "There's still our military forces, our soldiers. So they will fight to the end."