Humanitarian organizations lost access to 60,000 people in Ukraine: UN

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - The humanitarian organizations have lost access to 60,000 people in Ukraine due to the worsening security situation on the front lines, the UN said on Friday.

"Assistance to areas under Russian military control remained extremely limited,"Jens Laerke, the spokesperson of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a UN briefing in Geneva.

"This year, because of the worsening security situation and shifts in the front lines, humanitarian partners had lost access to almost 60,000 people in around 40 towns and villages close to the front lines in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Luhansk regions," Laerke said.

Separately, he said OCHA and its humanitarian partners have assisted 5.4 million people in Ukraine this year by the end of April.

The figure is around 800,000 people more than the total number assisted by the end of March, he said, adding that more than 60% of those reached are women and girls.

Over 2.1 million individuals have received monetary assistance, while 3.5 million have received food assistance, and nearly 3 million have gained access to health services and medicines, according to the spokesperson.

Regarding mine contamination, he said it represents a threat to farmers especially in the agricultural regions of Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Kherson, where dozens of mine-related accidents are being reported every month.

Casualties in Ukraine due to mines and explosive remnants of war in 2023 are 263 killed or injured, he said, adding the figure is more than 50 per month on average.