UN humanitarians on Friday issued a fresh alert amid rising and alarming levels of food insecurity after 100 days of the war in Ukraine.

Humanitarians have continued to push to secure food and fertiliser exports from Ukraine and Russia to the wider world, amid rising and alarming levels of food insecurity.

Amin Awad, the UN crisis coordinator for Ukraine, confirmed that an organisation was making every effort to secure the release of grain stuck in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

Mr Awad told journalists in Geneva from Kyiv that negotiations were going on, noting that there are a lot of details and shuttling between Moscow and other countries that have concerns, and the negotiations continue.

“But there’s no clear-cut emerging solution right now because it’s a board of puzzles that they have to move together,” he said.

The official said at least 15.7 million people in Ukraine are now urgently needed for humanitarian assistance and protection.

Also speaking from Lviv, Matthew Hollingworth, emergency coordinator for WFP in Ukraine, said the biggest challenge was to get aid into difficult terrain.

“Clearly, our biggest challenges are getting aid into the hardest-to-reach areas of this country, the war-torn areas, the occupied areas, the areas around the front line.”

He explained that 36 per cent of everything done in the last three months had been to support those areas of the country, even though it was not sufficient.

“We have verified 269 attacks on health,” Jarno Habicht, WHO Representative and Head of the WHO Country Office in Ukraine, said.

Health needs are also critical for the country’s women, 265,000 of whom were pregnant before the Russian invasion.

“We have received reports and heard testimonies from doctors about deliveries, including C-sections, taking place in the basements of maternity hospitals, in shelters, and even in metro stations,” Jaime Nadal, the UN Population Fund’s (UNFPA) representative in Ukraine, said.

Speaking from a railway station in Lviv, he added that other surgeries had taken place “in hard-to-reach areas with gynaecologists giving remote, online instructions during childbirth to save the lives of both the mother and newborn”.

Also, the UN migration agency IOM has continued to track the movement of people displaced by the war – including returnees – since it began on 24 February.

“Most of these returns have taken place to the north region of Ukraine, including almost one million persons to Kyiv itself,” Stephen Rogers, IOM Ukraine deputy chief of mission, said.

“However, when those persons returned to northern and central regions…33 per cent in the central region (and) 21 per cent in the north, those people who returned found destruction of their property and will need to rebuild.”

(NAN)