July 8, 2023, 7:56 AM
July 8, 2023, 7:56 AM
The UN denounced this Friday (07.07.2023) the human cost of the war in Ukraine, which in its first 500 days has claimed more than 9,000 civilian lives, including half a thousand children.
In a statement from its human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), the agency acknowledges that the actual number of victims of the conflict that began on February 24, 2022 is probably much higher.
“Today marks another grim milestone in the war that continues to take a horrible toll on the Ukrainian civilian population,” said Noel Calhoun, deputy head of the HRMMU.
Although the number of victims had fallen on average this year compared to 2022, it picked up again in May and June, observers say.
On June 27, 13 civilians, including four children, were killed in a missile attack in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine. On Thursday, far from the front line, at least ten people were killed in another attack in the western city of Lviv, the HRMMU says.
This makes “the last two weeks (to be) among the deadliest since the start of the Russian invasion,” the statement said.
The UN mission ensures that the number of civilians killed in the last 500 days triples the victims accumulated in the eight years of previous conflict between kyiv and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
