GENEVA: Over 14,000 people have been displaced in recent days from Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, where Russia launched a ground offensive on May 10, the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Tuesday.
The Russian troops had achieved their largest territorial gains in Ukraine in the last eighteen months.
Over the past two weeks, fighting in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine has escalated, WHO’s representative in Ukraine Jarno Habicht told a media briefing in Geneva, via video link from Kyiv, AFP reported.
He said that more than 14,000 people have been displaced in a matter of days, and about 189,000 more still reside within 25 kilometres of the border with Russia, facing significant risks due to the ongoing fighting.
He said the UN health agency was using these figures after speaking with local officials.
Jarno Habicht said that with the worsening security situation, humanitarian needs in the area are increasing rapidly. The conflict in Kharkiv has significantly increased the number of trauma patients.
Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine
Moscow started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then, over 20,000 amputations have been carried out, said Habicht.
And two hundred ambulances per year, on average, have been damaged or destroyed in shelling attacks, depriving the Ukrainians of urgent care, he added.
The UNHCR expressed concerns that conditions in Kharkiv — already home to 200,000 internally displaced people — could become even more difficult if the aerial strikes and ground assault continue.
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, is extremely worried about the worsening situation and the resulting increase in humanitarian needs and forced displacement owing to the new ground offensive, spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo told the Geneva briefing.
She said the Ukrainian authorities had evacuated over 10,300 people from villages in the Kharkiv region’s border areas, while others have left by their own means.
