Evacuation Trains from War Zone Pour into Lviv in Western Ukraine (+Video)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Thousands of women and children, many weeping and numb with exhaustion, are arriving in Lviv in western Ukraine as the state railway has put on more trains to rescue people from Russian military operation on eastern cities.
Hundreds more people lined up in flurries of snow on the station forecourt, warming themselves on oil-drum braziers or lining up for hot food and drinks served by volunteers, Al Jazeera reported.
Many women were in tears or on the verge of tears, their weary children standing silently beside them. Others carried cats in baskets or pulled shivering dogs on leashes.
The longest line was for free buses to neighboring Poland for women, children and older men. Men of fighting age are not permitted to leave Ukraine.
Other women shuffled with their children through a crowded tunnel leading to a platform from where four or five trains leave for Poland every day.
But people were not being allowed to bring big luggage on board.
A train carrying soldiers set off in the opposite direction, Reuters news agency reported.
Russia said its units had opened humanitarian corridors to allow evacuation of civilians from the cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha in eastern Ukraine, encircled by its troops.
But officials in Mariupol said Moscow was not fully observing the limited ceasefire, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said it understood that evacuations would not start on Saturday.