Ukrainian and Russian officials say that all women, children, and elderly people have been evacuated from the Mariupol steel plant that has been besieged for weeks by Moscow's forces amid the ruins of the port city.
"The President's order has been carried out: All women, children and the elderly have been evacuated from Azovstal," Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a statement on social media on May 7.
“This part of the Mariupol humanitarian mission has been completed," she added without elaborating.
The evacuation of the Azovstal steel mill has intensified in the past two days, even as Russia has continued to batter the facility and the strategic city, which is now mainly in ruins.
Russia is seeking to complete its takeover of the region and build a land bridge between Crimea -- which it illegally annexed in 2014 – and territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Mariupol has taken the worst of the fighting in Ukraine since Russian troops were forced to retreat around Kyiv and other cities in the north.
Before the weekend, an estimated 200 civilians had been hiding within the massive steel plant along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian defenders.
The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross have desperately been attempting to organize evacuations from the site.
Russian officials also later issued a statement saying that the civilian evacuation of the steel plant had been completed.
The fate of the fighters remains unclear.