Civilian casualties from February 24, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, to 24:00 on May 18 amounted to 8,089 civilians (the day before – 7,964), including 3,811 dead (3,778), reports the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Thursday.
“OHCHR believes that the actual figures are much higher as information is delayed from some areas of heavy fighting and many reports are still awaiting confirmation,” the UN data document notes.
According to him, this applies, for example, to Mariupol (Donetsk region), Izyum (Kharkiv region) and Popasna (Luhansk region), where there are reports of numerous civilian casualties. They are subject to further verification and are not included in the above statistics.
“The majority of civilian deaths or injuries were caused by the use of explosive devices with a wide area of effect, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, as well as rocket and air strikes,” the report says.
According to confirmed UN data, 1,429 men, 937 women, 98 boys and 87 girls died, while the sex of 70 children and 1,190 adults has not yet been determined.
Among the 4,278 injured were 115 boys and 103 girls, as well as 164 children whose gender has not yet been determined.
Compared with the report the day before, four children died.
OHCHR indicates that in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions at midnight on May 19, 1973 (1946) deaths and 1821 (1761) injured were recorded in the territory controlled by the government, and 126 (124) deaths and 502 (492) injured in the territory controlled by the self-proclaimed “republics”.
In other regions of Ukraine under government control (in Kyiv, as well as in Zhytomyr, Zaporozhye, Kyiv, Sumy, Odessa, Nikolaev, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions), the UN recorded 1712 (1708) dead and 1955 (1930) wounded .
The summary traditionally states that the increase in figures from the previous summary should not be attributed only to the cases on May 18, since during this period the Office verified a number of cases from previous days.
