UPDATE - Refugees fleeing war in Ukraine projected to exceed 8M by year's end: UN

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By Peter Kenny

GENEVA (AA) - The UN refugee agency on Tuesday projected that the number of people fleeing the war in Ukraine will soar to 8.3 million by the end of this year.

“The rapidity with which people are fleeing, we have not seen in recent times,” UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo told a news conference.

Mantoo said the number of internally displaced people in Ukraine currently stands at around 7.7 million, in addition to over 5.2 million fleeing to other countries.

At the same news conference, Jens Laerke, Geneva spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the estimated number of people in need of humanitarian aid has increased from 12 million to 15.7 million.

“Food is a primary need for those internally displaced” in Ukraine, according to International Organization for Migration spokesman Paul Dillon.

Meanwhile, the UN human rights office announced that at least 2,729 civilians have been killed and 3,111 injured since Russia launched a war on Ukraine on Feb. 24, with the true figure feared to be much higher.

- Attacks on healthcare

Bhanu Bhatnagar, a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), speaking from Rivne Oblast near the border with Belarus, said there have been a total of 164 attacks on health care, in which 73 people had been killed and 52 injured.

“We continue to condemn all attacks on health care,” said Bhatnagar.

“The way we verify this is to count any attack on any aspect of health care. That could be ambulances, personnel, transport, warehouses, supplies, and indeed hospitals and medical facilities.”

The WHO official said unknown is the status of the health system in many parts of eastern Ukraine, including the besieged city of Mariupol, to which Russian forces are preventing access and have claimed to have captured.

“And we continue to demand entry to Mariupol, so we can get in vital supplies,” said Bhatnagar.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said hundreds of wounded were among the soldiers holed up in the Azovstal steel plant, while some 120,000 civilians blockaded in the city.

Senior EU officials have called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure safe corridors remain open for civilian evacuation.