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Ukraine war reaches 500 days, UN laments 9,000 civilians killed
More than 9,000 civilians, including 500 children, have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the United Nations has said, condemning the cost to civilians as the war in Ukraine reached the 500-day mark.
The UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) said in a statement on Friday that it “deplored the horrendous civilian cost of the war in Ukraine” and was able to confirm that 9,000 civilians had been killed so far in the conflict. The mission warned that the actual toll is likely to be far higher than the number of officially confirmed deaths.
“Today we mark another grim milestone in the war that continues to exact a horrific toll on Ukraine’s civilians,” Noel Calhoun, the deputy head of HRMMU, said in the statement to mark the 500th day since the start of the invasion.
While this year the casualty numbers in Ukraine have been lower on average than in 2022, the figure began to climb again in May and June, the monitors noted.
On June 27, 13 civilians, including four children, were killed in a missile attack on Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.
And far from the front line in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, 10 people were killed and another 37 were wounded during a missile attack early on Thursday morning that the mayor called the biggest attack on civilian infrastructure since the invasion began.
The UN said that the attack was also the first to take place in an area protected by the World Heritage Convention and had damaged a historic building.