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UN: death toll in east Ukraine conflict exceeds 4,700

A total of 10,360 people have been wounded, the report said

UNITED NATIONS, December 29. /TASS/. At least 4,771 people have been killed in the conflict in east Ukraine since April 2014, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) said in a report published Monday.

The death count includes nearly 300 people who were on board a Malaysian Boeing that crashed in the Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine in summer. A total of 10,360 people have been wounded, the report said.

In its new report, the UN notes nearly daily violations of the ceasefire regime, as well as outflow of the population from the combat operations area, where some 5.2 million people live.

According to the OCHA, the number of internally displaced persons in Ukraine exceeds 610,000. Another 594,000 have fled to neighboring countries, mainly to Russia.

Thousands of people have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands have fled Ukraine’s southeast as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, conducted since mid-April, to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics, according to United Nations data.

A ceasefire was agreed upon at talks between the parties to the Ukrainian conflict mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed his plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine.

Numerous violations of the ceasefire, which took effect the same day, have been reported since.

A memorandum was adopted on September 19 in Minsk by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine comprising representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE. The document outlined the parameters for the implementation of commitments on the ceasefire in Ukraine laid down in the Minsk Protocol of September 5.

The nine-point memorandum in particular envisioned a ban on the use of all armaments and withdrawal of weapons with the calibers of over 100 millimeters to a distance of 15 kilometers from the contact line from each side. The OSCE was tasked with controlling the implementation of memorandum provisions.

A "day of silence" in eastern Ukraine began at 09:00 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) on December 9. It is seen as another attempt by both parties to the intra-Ukrainian conflict to put an end to hostilities.

On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 passenger airliner on flight MH17 from the Dutch city of Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur crashed in the Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. Most passengers - over 190 people - were Dutch nationals.

The Dutch Safety Board, which is leading the probe and coordinating the international team of investigators, said in its preliminary report published September 9 that “flight MH17 with a Boeing 777-200 operated by Malaysia Airlines broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.”

A final report is due to be published within a year following the crash.