File Photo
Geneva: The head of the World Health Organization said Sunday that its offices in Kyiv had been damaged by debris from Russian strikes, insisting that attacks on civilians must stop.
Russia pounded the Ukrainian capital with a massive bombardment that killed four people, authorities said, with Moscow unleashing its nuclear-capable hypersonic Oreshnik missile in one of the largest barrages in the more-than-four-year-long war.
Overnight, the WHO office in Kyiv "was hit by debris from one of many strikes in the city, damaging windows on the third floor", the UN health agency's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
"This building is home to many UN agencies besides WHO. No one got injured.
"Multiple deaths and injuries have been reported so far from the attacks on civilian infrastructure overnight. Attacks on health and civilians must stop. We urge once again for a ceasefire. Peace is the best medicine."
On Friday, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said a warehouse it was leasing in Dnipro in eastern Ukraine had been completely destroyed in a direct hit by a Russian missile, with the loss of $1 million of stock.
Two people were killed in the strike.
That attack on Wednesday injured others and caused significant damage, destroying around 900 pallets of basic aid items and shelter materials, said Bernadette Castel-Hollingworth, the UNHCR representative in Ukraine.
"We lost shelter materials, including emergency shelter kits that we distribute after air attacks; we lost sleeping mats, hygiene kits, blankets and essential emergency items," she told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Warsaw.
She said it was significant because "this was the first such attack on a UNHCR facility since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion" of Ukraine in 2022.
"Intensifying Russian attacks across Ukraine are killing and injuring increasing numbers of civilians, forcing people to flee their homes and disrupting humanitarian operations in the country," Castel-Hollingworth added.
She said nearly 47,000 evacuees had passed through UNHCR-supported transit centres so far this year, though the full number of people who fled their homes in Ukraine would be much higher.
