LONDON, July 14 - Up to 1.3 million people in war-torn eastern Ukraine are facing acute water shortages and a serious water crisis due to damaged or destroyed infrastructure, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF said on Tuesday.

Many in the Luhansk region have to rely on water trucks or travel to neighboring villages to get water. In Mariupol, a city of 500,000 in the Donetsk region, they rely on water from a "rapidly depleting" reservoir, UNICEF said.