Nearly 2,000 people still live in the town of Beryslav, including more than 70 children and 90 people with reduced mobility.
“Despite the continuous shelling, they have not evacuated the area. There is no electricity, no gas, no water, all because of the damaged infrastructure,” said UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric, who briefed correspondents in New York.
Aid workers provided a portable power station, hygiene items, bedding, blankets and warm clothing, he added.
As rocket attacks and bombardments by invading Russian forces increased in recent days, nearly 30 civilians were killed in the hostilities in the Donetsk and Sumy regions.
Mandatory evacuations
“Houses, shops, agricultural assets and gas and electricity infrastructure have reportedly been damaged,” Mr Dujarric said. “The Ukrainian government tells us that they have started the mandatory evacuation of children and their caregivers from another 40 towns and villages in the Donetsk region.”
A wave of Russian strikes on Wednesday killed a mother and her three daughters, adding to seven deaths in the western city of Lviv. A baby and another girl also died in drone and hypersonic missile strikes.
The attacks followed Russia’s deadliest attack of the year, which left 53 people dead in the central city of Poltava.
Nienke Voppen, head of the UN Children’s Fund’s office in Lviv, told UN News on Thursday that 66 people in the city were also injured in Wednesday’s attacks, including 10 children.
Violence and insecurity force closure of 14,300 schools in West and Central Africa
More than 14,000 schools have been forced to close in West and Central Africa due to violence and insecurity, the UN Aid Coordination Office said. OCHA has reported.
According to OCHA, as of June this year, 2.8 million children – many of them displaced – had no access to education, from Mali in the west to the Democratic Republic of Congo in the east.
The latest aid assessments show that the humanitarian situation in the region is unstable, with the number of security incidents affecting education increasing by 103 percent between March and June compared to the beginning of the year.
Numbers are increasing
The UN agency also reported a slight increase in the number of closed schools from March to June, compared to the previous three months, and a small additional number of displaced people and refugees, adding to the pressure on services.
OCHA stressed that a “massive” lack of funding continues to hamper the humanitarian response. It said only around a quarter of children in affected areas had access to education in the last period assessed, compared with one in two earlier this year.
Georgia: Targeted and ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders must stop: UN expert
Human rights defenders in Georgia have faced a “wave of repression” this year that shows no signs of abating, said the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, said on thursday.
“In late 2023, I visited Georgia to investigate the environment for human rights defenders in the country, and things were on the brink of collapse,” Ms Lawlor said, adding that since then “the situation has deteriorated dramatically”.
The UN Human Rights Council-An independent expert-appointed expert pointed to the targeted approach taken against human rights defenders during the passage of the Foreign Influence Transparency Act by parliament earlier this year.
The law was adopted on May 28, 2024, despite widespread protests in the country. It violates Georgia’s human rights obligations regarding freedom of association and expression. The law will enter into force on August 1.
“As the government pushed the ‘foreign agents’ bill through parliament, human rights defenders were targeted in relentless, targeted attacks,” Ms Lawlor continued.
“They were physically attacked, received threatening phone calls, and their offices and homes, and those of human rights organizations and their individual members, were painted with threats and slander.”
Fanning the flames
The Special Rapporteur stressed that these attacks occurred with impunity and that in some cases they even appear to have been encouraged by public statements by high-ranking government officials.
“Government officials and ruling party members publicly smearing human rights defenders as enemies of the people remains a major problem in Georgia,” she said.
“These statements encourage and legitimize attacks on human rights defenders, and in the Georgian context it seems increasingly clear that this is what they want to do.”
Special Rapporteurs are appointed to monitor and report on the situation in specific countries or thematic issues worldwide.
They are not UN staff and are independent of any government or organization. They serve in their individual capacity and receive no salary for their work.
