About 800 people are hiding in several bomb shelters under the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, which the Russians are shelling.

Serhiy Gaidai, the head of the Lugansk OMA, said this in a comment to CNN.

"Local residents were asked to leave the city, but they refused. There are also children there, but there are not many of them," the head of the OMA specified.

Most of Severodonetsk has been captured by Russia, but the Ukrainian military still controls the Severodonetsk industrial zone, Gaidai said.

The head of the OMA also clarified that the plant is privately owned, and the owners say that only a small amount of chemicals remain on the site.

He also added that Azot is of no interest to the Russian military from a military point of view, unlike the Mariupol Azovstal.

Gaidai recalled that a Russian airstrike hit a tank with nitric acid at the plant on Tuesday, but there was no threat to people.