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Red Cross reports 23,000 people missing in Ukraine war

missing son
KEYSTONE/Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is is seeking to clarify the fate of 23,000 people missing in connection with the war in Ukraine.

By the end of January, the organisation had helped some 8,000 families obtain information on the fate or whereabouts of their loved ones.

Over the past two years, the ICRC has received more than 115,000 tracing requests from families in Ukraine and Russia, the Geneva-based organisation said in a statement on Monday.

Searches are managed by the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency Bureau (CTA-B) for the international armed conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, which was opened in March 2022.

The ICRC reiterated that the right of families to know the fate of their missing relatives is enshrined in international humanitarian law. In any international armed conflict, the parties have an obligation to prevent people from going missing and to ensure that families searching for their loved ones are informed of what has happened to them.

Translated from French by DeepL/ac

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