More than 2.5 million people have now fled Ukraine: UN

GENEVA: Two and a half million people have fled

Ukraine

since Russia invaded and another two million have been internally displaced by the war, the United Nations said on Friday.


The UN refugee agency's chief Filippo

Grandi

blamed the mass displacement on what he called a "senseless war" that began on February 24.

"The number of refugees from Ukraine - tragically - has reached today 2.5 million,"

UNHCR

chief Grandi tweeted.

"We also estimate that about two million people are displaced inside Ukraine. Millions forced to leave their homes by this senseless war."

Paul Dillon

, spokesman for the UN's international organization for migration, said the two and a half million people who had fled Ukraine included 116,000 nationals from other countries.

Before Russia invaded, more than 37 million people lived in Ukrainian territory under the control of the central government in Kyiv.

More than half of those who have fled have gone to Poland.

Russian strikes hit civilian targets in central Ukraine's Dnipro city on Friday, as Moscow's troops edged closer to the capital Kyiv that, according to its mayor

Vitali Klitschko

, has lost half of its estimated 3.5 million population since the war began.