About 40-50% of Toretsk remains under AFU control – administration’s head

Vasyl Chynchyk, the head of the Toretsk city military administration, said this on Ukrainian television, Ukrinform reports.

“About 40-50% of the city remains under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, with the remaining territory having been captured by the enemy,” he said.

“We are making every effort to evacuate civilians. However, that this is not a situation in which people can be transported by bus in an organized manner. There is no opportunity for people to take their valuables and leave for safer places. Today, about 1,150 people who remain [in the city], go outside only with documents, and sometimes they don't even have them [the documents],” he added.

The Toretsk city military administration head said that seven people had been evacuated from the territory of the Toretsk community yesterday.

“The security component allows us to enter the city and evacuate the population only at certain intervals, when there is no shelling or there are favorable climatic conditions,” he said.

Before the full-scale invasion, Toretsk was home to about 70,000 people.

The Toretsk city territorial community wrote on its Facebook page that since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as of October 9, 207 residents have been killed and 609 injured by enemy shelling.