UN: About 9,000 civilians have died during the war in Ukraine

The United Nations (UN) has noted a large number of civilian casualties in the war in Ukraine, which has been going on for 500 days.

More than 9,000 civilians, including 500 children, have died since the Russian occupation of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine said.

"Today marks a dark new phase in a war that continues to cause horrific casualties among Ukrainian civilians," Noel Calhoun, deputy head of the UN Human Rights Mission in Ukraine, said in a statement. released on Friday, the 500th day since the start of the war, February 24, 2022.

Although this year's death toll was on average lower than in 2022, it began to rise again in May and June, observers said.

In a rocket attack in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on June 27, 13 civilians were killed, including four children.

Far from the front line in Lviv, to the west, ten people were killed in shelling early Thursday morning, in what the mayor called the biggest attack on civilian infrastructure since the occupation began.

In that attack, 42 ​​people were injured, including three children, according to a report by Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs released Friday.

UNESCO announced that this attack was also the first in an area protected by the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage and that a historic building was damaged in it.

The cities of Bucha, in the north of the country not far from Kiev, and Mariupol in the southeast, have become symbols of the 2023 attacks, for which Russia is accused of war crimes and genocide. REL