GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — UN agencies on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to attacks on health-care professionals and facilities in Ukraine, which have killed a dozen people, describing them as acts of “unconscionable cruelty”.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 31 attacks on health care have been documented via the World Health Organization (WHO) Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA), said the joint statement.

It was signed by the heads of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Population Fund and the WHO.

“To attack the most vulnerable — babies, children, pregnant women and those already suffering from illness and disease, and health workers risking their own lives to save lives — is an act of unconscionable cruelty,” they said.

In 24 of the reported attacks, health care facilities were damaged or destroyed, while in five cases ambulances were hit, they added. A total of 12 people were killed and 34 injured.

The statement called for an immediate ceasefire.

Aid and health-care workers had to be able to work in safety, “including immunisation against COVID-19 and polio, and the supply of life-saving medicines for civilians across Ukraine as well as to refugees crossing into neighbouring countries,” they said.

At least three people were killed, including a young girl, in an attack last Wednesday on a children’s hospital in Mariupol in southern Ukraine.

According to the United Nations’ reproductive health agency, two other Ukrainian maternity hospitals had already been attacked and destroyed before that strike.

“Attacks on health care and health workers directly impact people’s ability to access essential health services — especially women, children and other vulnerable groups,” the UN agency chiefs said in their statement on Sunday.