The UN announces the arrival of two aid convoys to the eastern front of the war in Ukraine

MADRID, 3 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The United Nations announced this Friday the arrival this week of two aid convoys to the communities near the fronts in the Zaporizhia and Donetsk regions, in eastern Ukraine, practically isolated from the outside world and especially vulnerable in the dead of winter.

There are a total of eleven trucks divided into two aid missions that transport medicines, roof repair material, solar lamps and bottled water to serve as many of the approximately 20,000 people as possible who live threatened by the fighting near the places 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, medicine, emergency shelter material 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 kit also carries emergency medical supplies for the approximately 15,000 people who live in and around the city, home to 75,000 residents before the start of the Russian invasion.

The second convoy, of five trucks, arrived on Thursday in the city of Hulyaipole, in Zaporizhia, where some 3,000 people reside, many of them elderly and families with children, potential targets for "reduced mobility", according to the spokesman for the Office for the United Nations Coordination, Jens Laerke.

The spokesman highlighted the serious crisis that the towns near the front are going through, 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 wild winter "something impossible" because the violence continues.

The United Nations 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 arrived in areas controlled by Russia because Moscow "has not provided sufficient security guarantees" to travel to those areas.

In this sense, the United Nations recalls that, according to the WHO, since the beginning of the war there have been 764 attacks against medical centers or health workers that have left at least 101 dead and 131 deceased.