By InfactNG
The UN refugee agency has increased its estimate of the number of people it expects to leave Ukraine this year due to the war, to 8.3 million.
This is as the UN said it was prepared to evacuate those trapped in Mariupol so as to save lives.
A previous projection at the beginning of March suggested four million refugees would leave, but that estimate has already been surpassed. Since Russia invaded two months ago, more than five million people have fled according to the UN, with an additional 7.7 million people displaced within the country.
Speaking about the UN’s proposals for the besieged city of Mariupol, Guterres said the organisation was “ready to fully mobilise its human and logistical resources” to help save lives and evacuate people. Guterres said, “thousands of civilians are in dire need of lifesaving humanitarian assistance” in the city. He also proposed work with the Red Cross to enable people holed up inside the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol to leave.
