More than 170 people have been evacuated from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Sunday, including some from its besieged Azovstal steelworks, after weeks of shelling and fighting as Russia attempts to take over the port city, writes cbc.ca.

In a statement Sunday, Osnat Lubrani, the United Nation’s humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, said more than 600 people have now been evacuated from the Mariupol area.

The evacuees have been taken to Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeastern Ukraine.

Lubrani thanked leaders in both Kyiv and Moscow “for ensuring the necessary humanitarian pauses” in fighting, to enable the evacuation corridor.

The Azovstal plant is a last holdout for Ukrainian forces in the city now largely controlled by Russia, and many civilians had taken refuge in its underground shelters. It has become a symbol of resistance to the Russian effort to capture swaths of Ukraine’s east and south.