Facts

Residents of eastern Ukraine should be able to meet, support each other - ICRC

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) notes the importance of providing opportunities for meetings for residents of eastern Ukraine, whose relatives live on opposite sides of the disengagement line.

"Civilians and infrastructure ensuring the delivery of essential services must be spared, families must be able to see and support each other, and detainees must be treated humanely," ICRC Director of Operations Dominik Stillhart said in a statement, released by the ICRC's press office on Thursday.

He said that this is required by the rules of international humanitarian law applicable to all armed conflicts.

The ICRC representative noted that Ukraine was once again in the center of media attention, "but it never stopped being one for the people suffering through the fighting."

"We support hundreds of thousands of people living close to the line of contact who regularly suffer from disrupted access to medical care, food, water, heating and electricity, but also to education, social services and livelihood opportunities," the statement said.

Stillhart noted that thousands of civilians and participants in the fighting were killed, injured, detained or separated from their families, and hundreds of people are still looking for missing loved ones.

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