UNITED NATIONS, Safar 1, 1437, November 13, 2015, SPA -- The U.N. children’s fund (UNICEF) said Friday that damaged pipelines in war-torn eastern Ukraine are threatening to cut off water, heating, and electrical supplies at a time when temperatures are beginning to plunge. UNICEF noted that central heating systems and much of the electrical supply in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, under pro-Russian separatist control, rely on water, but that the water flow is being hampered by damaged pipelines and infrastructure, as well as debris from destroyed bridges. “At the moment, about 700,000 children are at risk because of the potential failure of the central heating systems in that area during the freezing winter months,” William Fellows, head of UNICEF’s water and sanitation division in Ukraine, told reporters in Geneva via telephone link from Kiev. Those children are among nearly five million people living in the Donetsk and Lugansk region who are “totally dependent on two centralized water systems, both of which actually cross the front line of the conflict, and both systems have been damaged heavily during the conflict,” Fellows said. Fellows stressed the urgency of repairing the water network, noting that temperatures in the region routinely drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius and even as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. Unless these repairs are carried out before winter hits hard, we run the very real risk of the water supplies freezing and consequently the failure of the heating systems,” Fellows said." --SPA 21:16 LOCAL TIME 18:16 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w