The United Nations announced Friday the arrival this week of two aid convoys to communities near the front lines of the Zaporiyia and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine, practically cut off from the outside world and particularly vulnerable in the middle of winter.
A total of eleven trucks in two aid missions are transporting medicines, roof repair materials, solar lamps and bottled water to help as many as possible of the estimated 20,000 people living under threat from the fighting near where the vehicles have arrived.
The first convoy of six trucks arrived on Tuesday in the town of Toretsk, ten kilometers from the Donetsk front, with water, medicines, emergency shelter materials and other supplies thanks to a joint operation by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
This material also carries emergency medical supplies for the approximately 15,000 people living in and around the city, home to 75,000 residents before the Russian invasion began.
The second convoy of five trucks arrived Thursday in the town of Hulyaipole in Zaporiyia, home to some 3,000 people, many of them elderly and families with children, potential targets of «reduced mobility,» according to UN Office for the Coordination spokesman Jens Laerke.
The spokesman stressed the serious crisis in the populations near the front, lacking «electricity and drinking water» since March last year — both in Hulyaipole and in 30 adjacent communities, in need of «urgent repairs before the arrival of the savage winter», something impossible «because the violence continues».
The UN has explained that, since the beginning of the war eleven months ago, more than 30 convoys have reached vulnerable communities under the control of Ukrainian forces. None have reached Russian-controlled areas because Moscow «has not provided sufficient security guarantees» for travel to those areas.
The United Nations recalls in this regard that, according to the WHO, since the beginning of the war, 764 attacks against medical centers or health workers have been registered, leaving at least 101 dead and 131 dead.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
