Ukrainian family describes 2 months in mouldy bunker under steel mill, with little food or water

When the moist concrete walls deep below ground and the mould and the cold and the weeks without fresh fruit or vegetables became too much to bear, some in the bunker underneath Elina Tsybulchenko's office decided to visit the sky.

They made their way, through darkness lit by flashlights and lamps powered by car batteries, to a treasured spot in the bombarded Azovstal steel plant, the last Ukrainian holdout in the ruined city of Mariupol. There, they could look up and see a sliver of blue or smoky grey. It was like peering from the bottom of a well. For those who could not, or dared not, climb to the surface, it was as distant as peace.

But seeing the sky meant hope. It was enough to make Elina's adult daughter, Tetyana, cry.

The Tsybulchenko family was among the first to emerge from the steel plant in a tense, days-long evacuation negotiated by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with the governments of Russia, which now controls Mariupol, and Ukraine, which wants the city back.

Hundreds of civilians have fled the steel mill in the last week, though renewed attacks continue to interrupt evacuation efforts.

The Tsybulchenko family arrived safely in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia this week. There, they described for The Associated Press their two months at the centre of hell, and their escape.

Hundreds of civilians and Ukrainian fighters remain trapped at the plant and Russian forces have pushed their way inside. The seizure of Mariupol is expected to play a central role in Moscow's celebration on May 9 of Victory Day, historically marking the end of the Second World War.

In the earliest days of Russia's invasion, Tsybulchenko, 54, was shocked by the bombardment of her city. Like many residents with memories of civil defence drills, she knew the steel plant had the only real bunkers in town. When she, her husband, Serhii, her daughter and her son-in-law, Ihor Trotsak, decided to hole up in the one under her office, she assumed they would stay a few days.

"We didn't even take toothbrushes," Elina said. But a few days turned into 60.

They had brought only their documents, three blankets, two dogs and fruit carried in a basket they used for Orthodox Easter. They didn't think they would mark the holiday there weeks later.

The steel plant has a maze of more than 30 bunkers and tunnels stretching across 11 square kilometres, and each bunker was its own world. Evacuees had little or no communication with those elsewhere in the plant, though they would eventually meet on the evacuation buses to Zaporizhzhia and compare experiences.

Their isolation complicates estimates of the number of civilians and Ukrainian fighters who remain. A few hundred civilians are still trapped, the Ukrainian side said this week, including more than 20 children. Another evacuation effort was reported underway Friday.

The number of those surviving underground threatens to drop every day. Some evacuees recalled watching in horror as the wounded succumbed to their injuries while first aid supplies, even clean water, ran short or ran out.

"People literally rot like our jackets did," said 31-year-old Serhii Kuzmenko. The weary foreman at the plant fled along with his wife, 8-year-old daughter and four others from their bunker; 30 were left behind. "They need our help badly," he said. "We need to get them out."