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STORY: The Azov video showed men in uniform walking inside a location said to be a bunker in the Azovstal steel complex. They announced they brought food and gifts for the children seen inside a room.

The video showed women wearing the Azovstal uniform design, which Reuters verified, matched in file images.

Reuters could not independently verify where or when the video was shot.

A woman holding a toddler said they were running out of food and she hoped to be evacuated.

The Azov Battalion was set up in 2014 as a group comprising pro-Ukrainian nationalist volunteers who fought against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv later incorporated the Azov fighters as a regiment in its National Guard. Russia accuses the group of being a neo-Nazi organisation, an allegation Ukraine rejects as pure propaganda.

On Saturday Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that if all went as planned, evacuations from the besieged city of Mariupol would start at noon (0900 GMT).