At least 902 civilians killed in Ukraine since conflict began: UN

[ZURICH] At least 902 civilians have been killed and 1,459 injured in Ukraine as at midnight local time on Mar 19, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Sunday (Mar 20).

Most of the casualties were from explosive weapons such as shelling from heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes, OHCHR said.

The actual toll is thought to be considerably higher since OHCHR, which has a large monitoring team in the country, has not yet been able to receive or verify casualty reports from several badly hit cities including Mariupol, it said.

Ten million people - more than a quarter of the population - have now fled their homes in Ukraine since Russia's invasion, the United Nations refugees chief said on Sunday. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said nearly 3.4 million of the total had fled to neighbouring countries, mostly to the Polish border.

"Among the responsibilities of those who wage war, everywhere in the world, is the suffering inflicted on civilians who are forced to flee their homes," UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said, implicitly holding Russia. "The war in Ukraine is so devastating that 10 million have fled, either displaced inside the country, or as refugees abroad," he said.

UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said on Sunday that 3,389,044 Ukrainians had fled across the country's borders since Russia invaded on Feb 24. Another 60,352 joined the exodus since Saturday's update, a flow roughly the same as the day before.

Some 90 percent of those who have fled are women and children. Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are eligible for military call-up and cannot leave.

Unicef, the UN children's agency, said more than 1.5 million children are among those who have fled abroad, warning that the risks they face of human trafficking and exploitation are "real, and growing".

The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) also said that as at last Wednesday, 162,000 third-country nationals had fled Ukraine to neighbouring states.

Millions more have fled their homes but remain within Ukraine's borders. Some 6.48 million people were estimated to be internally displaced within Ukraine as at last Wednesday, according to UN and related agencies, following an IOM representative survey.

Before the conflict, Ukraine had a population of 37 million in the regions under government control. REUTERS, AFP