GENEVA

Fighting in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk has left close to one million people internally displaced, the U.N. Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said Friday. 

"The number of registered IDPs countrywide stands at 980,000 – a figure that is expected to rise as more newly uprooted people are being registered," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards warned. "Some 600,000 Ukrainians have sought asylum or other forms of legal stay in neighboring countries, particularly the Russian Federation, but also Belarus, Moldova, Poland, Hungary and Romania, since February 2014." 

More than 5,300 people have been killed and 12,200 others injured in eastern Ukraine since April 2014 in the ongoing conflict between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists, the U.N. said Tuesday.