Civilian casualties from the Russian invasion of Ukraine are, so far, 1,179 according to figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which has detailed that 1,860 others have been injured.
Most have been injured or killed due to the use of explosives, including heavy artillery shelling and missile launching systems. Also because of air strikes, according to the UN office.
OHCHR believes that the balance sheet is “considerably higher”, as areas in which intense hostilities are taking place delay the delivery of data and much information remains to be corroborated, for example in Mariupol or Volnovakja, in the Donetsk region.
Nine dead in Mikolaiv
At least nine people were killed and 28 injured on Tuesday in a Russian attack that partially destroyed the headquarters of the regional government in Mikolaiv, a Ukrainian city close to Odessa, according to a new balance sheet by the Ukrainian prosecutor's office.
“According to the investigation (...), the Russian armed forces launched a missile attack” against this building and “there are currently nine dead and 28 injured,” the press service of Attorney General Iryna Venediktova announced.
“Rescuers, investigators from the SBU [Ukrainian security services] and the police” are deployed at the scene, he added.
No military targets were attacked, “the inhabitants of Mikolaiv posed no threat to Russia”. And yet, like all Ukrainians, they became targets of Russian troops,” the president said during an intervention before the Danish Parliament.
Regional Governor Vitaly Kim said on Facebook that rescue teams were looking for “eight civilians and three soldiers” under the rubble.
Kim said that “half of the building was destroyed” and that his office was hit.
The Russians “realized that they could not take Mikolaiv and decided to greet me, greet us all,” he ironized.
So far, more than 3.9 million people have left Ukraine since Russia launched its military offensive on February 24, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who estimates that more than ten million Ukrainians have had to leave their homes in a month.
The port city of Mikolaiv has recorded attacks by Russian forces for weeks. On March 19, a bombardment launched from the Kherson region left dozens of fatalities, the vast majority of them military.
On Tuesday, Valentin Reznichenko, who is in charge of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said that Russian troops have carried out a series of attacks in the area.
In Novomoskovsky district, a missile hit a farm and at least one person was injured, according to UNIAN news agency. Another missile would have fallen in the Nikopol region.
(With information from AFP, EuropaPress)
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