All women, children now evacuated from Mariupol steel mill

All women, children and elderly civilians have been evacuated from the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol, which has been long besieged by Russian forces, Ukraine's deputy prime minister said Saturday, despite what military officers said was an ongoing Russian assault at the plant.

"This part of the Mariupol humanitarian operation is over," Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The Soviet-era steel mill, the last holdout in Mariupol for Ukrainian forces, has emerged as a symbol of resistance to the wider Russian effort to capture swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine in the 10-week-old war.

Under heavy bombardment, fighters and civilians have been trapped for weeks in deep bunkers and tunnels that criss-cross the site, with little food, water or medicine.

Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery tried again on Saturday to storm Azovstal, Ukraine's military command said, part of a ferocious assault to dislodge the last Ukrainian defenders in the strategic port city on the Azov Sea.

Mariupol has been left in ruins by weeks of Russian bombardment and the steel mill has been largely destroyed. Several groups of civilians have left the sprawling complex over the past week during pauses in the fighting.

Earlier on Saturday, Russia's Interfax news agency cited Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine's Donetsk region as saying that 50 more people had been evacuated from the besieged steelworks.

However, by 4 p.m. GMT, Reuters journalists had not seen any sign of their arrival at a reception center in the separatist-controlled territory near Mariupol.