The number of civilian casualties in the war in Ukraine confirmed by the UN passed the 8,000 mark this Tuesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights announced, adding that 13,287 civilians were injured.
“Our data is just the tip of the ‘iceberg’ in a war whose costs to civilians are unbearable,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Tuesday.
The UN agency, which has been monitoring civilian casualties since the beginning of the Russian invasion almost a year ago, published an annual report this Tuesday highlighting that at least 487 of the dead civilians and 954 of the injured were children.
Among casualties (injuries and deaths) whose gender is known, 40% were women, the report says, acknowledging that the true number must be much higher as there is no complete data on the war’s impact on cities hardest hit by the conflict, such as Mariipol, Lisichansk, Popasna or Severodonetsk.
Donetsk is by far the region where the UN confirmed the existence of the highest number of civilian deaths (3,800) and injuries (6,600), followed by Kharkov (924 killed and 2,000 injured) and Kiev and its surroundings (955 killed and 312 injured). .
The High Commission also recorded two deaths in Poland, in the border area with Ukraine (victims of a Ukrainian missile that hit the area in November), and 30 deaths and more than 100 wounded in regions of the Russian border with Ukrainian territory, such as Belgorod, Kursk and Briansk.
The month of March last year saw the most civilian casualties, with more than 3,900 killed and 2,900 confirmed injured, and since then the number has been gradually reduced to around 200 per month between November 2022 and January 2023.
The report also highlights that 90% of civilian deaths and injuries were caused by high-powered explosive weapons (such as missiles), mostly in attacks on populated areas, with at least 6,585 killed and 12,635 injured.
In addition, according to the United Nations research, 84% of these attacks took place in areas controlled by the Ukrainian government and 15% in areas occupied by Russian forces.
The analysis also points to a sharp increase in civilian casualties in 2022 (202 dead and 369 injured) due to anti-personnel mines, weapon remnants and explosions in ammunition depots, which have caused several deaths since Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014.
“Violations of human rights and international law take place every day and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a way out of the growing suffering and destruction, a way out that leads to peace,” said Volker Türk, who visited Ukraine in December .
The High Commissioner also recalled that as a result of the conflict there are already 18 million people in desperate need of humanitarian aid and that around 14 million people have left their homes, either to flee to other regions of Ukraine, as internally displaced persons or to to leave the country. as refugees.
“The war still affected the youngest, whose education was affected or interrupted by the attacks on schools, but also the elderly and disabled,” remembers Türk.
The High Commissioner, of Austrian nationality, stressed that many of those left behind in war-affected areas are elderly people who cannot or do not want to leave their homes, even knowing they are in dangerous areas.
Source: DN
