UNITED NATIONS: Russia’s intense missile and drone attacks across Ukraine in recent weeks sharply increased civilian casualties in December with over 100 killed and nearly 500 injured, the United Nations said in a new report Tuesday.
The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said there was a 26.5 percent increase in civilian casualties last month – from 468 in November to 592 in December. With some reports still pending verification, it said, the increase was likely higher.
Danielle Bell who heads the UN’s monitoring mission. said: “Civilian casualties had been steadily decreasing in 2023 but the wave of attacks i n late December and early January violently interrupted that trend.”
The UN mission said it is verifying reports the recent intense Russian missile and drone attacks that began hitting populated areas across Ukraine on Dec. 29 and continued into early January killed 86 civilians and injured 416 others.
“These attacks sow death and destruction on Ukraine’s civilians who have endured profound losses from Russia’s full-scale invasion for almost two years now,” Bell said.
The UN monitoring mission said the highest number of casualties occurred during attacks on Dec. 29 and Jan. 2 amid plummeting winter temperatures. On Jan. 4, it said, Russian missiles struck the small town of Pokrovsk and nearby village of Rivne close to the front lines, burying two families – six adults and five children – in the rubble of their homes. Some bodies have still not been found, it said.
In another attack on Jan. 6, the blast wave from a Russian missile strike in Novomoskovsk injured 31 civilians including eight passengers on a minibus that was destroyed during the morning commute, the UN said.
The confirmed number of civilians killed since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 is more than 10,200, including 575 children, and the number of injured is over 19,300, the UN humanitarian office’s operations director, Edem Wosornu, told the UN Security Council last Wednesday.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv gives timely data on military losses, and each is at pains to amplify the other side’s casualties as the nearly two-year war grinds on with no sign of peace talks to end the conflict.
Russia’s intense attacks on Ukraine has sharply increased civilian casualties in December, UN says
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Russia’s intense attacks on Ukraine has sharply increased civilian casualties in December, UN says
- Neither Moscow nor Kyiv gives timely data on military losses, and each is at pains to amplify the other side’s casualties as the nearly two-year war grinds on with no sign of peace talks to end the conflict
26 Doctors without Borders workers remain unaccounted for in South Sudan a month after attacks
- A hospital in the town of Lankien was bombed by government forces, MSF said
- “We have lost contact with them amid ongoing insecurity”
NAIROBI: More than two dozen Doctors Without Borders workers remain unaccounted for a month after attacks in South Sudan, the medical charity said.
Two facilities belonging to the group, known by French acronym MSF, were attacked on Feb. 3 in Jonglei State, northeast of the capital, Juba, where violence has displaced an estimated 280,000 people since December.
A hospital in the town of Lankien was bombed by government forces, MSF said, while another medical facility in the town of Pieri was raided by “unknown assailants.” Both were located in opposition-held areas.
Staff working at the two facilities fled alongside much of the local population into deeply rural areas where armed clashes and aerial bombardments were ongoing.
MSF said in a statement on Monday that “26 of 291 of our colleagues working in Lankien and Pieri remain unaccounted for.
“We have lost contact with them amid ongoing insecurity,” it said.
The lack of communication with its staff could be linked to the limited network connectivity in much of the state. Staff members who had been contacted described “destruction, violence and extreme hardships.”
Fighting escalated sharply in December, when opposition forces captured a string of government outposts in north central Jonglei. In January, the government responded with a counteroffensive that recaptured most of the area it had lost.
Displaced people in Akobo, an opposition-held town near the Ethiopian border, described horrific violence by government fighters. Many described not being able to find food or water as they walked for days to reach safety.
The attacks on MSF facilities in Lankien and Pieri are part of an uptick in violence on humanitarian staff, supplies and infrastructure, aid groups say. MSF facilities have been attacked 10 times in the last 12 months.
“This violence has taken an unbearable toll not only on health care services, but on the very people who kept them running,” said Yashovardhan, MSF head of mission in South Sudan, who only uses one name.
“Medical workers must never be targets,” he said. “We are deeply concerned about what has happened to our colleagues and the communities we serve.”
