Photo from the archive: a destroyed kindergarten in Odessa. Shelling of Odessa: almost half of the dead are children Peace and Security
Over the weekend, Ukraine suffered one of its deadliest attacks in months. Of the 12 killed in the shelling of Odessa, almost half were minors.
12 dead
On Saturday, a drone or its debris destroyed a nine-story residential building in Odessa. Of the 12 people killed in the strike, nearly half were children. This was reported on Monday by the UN Monitoring Mission on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine.
“The attack killed five children, most of whom were under the age of three, making it “the deadliest incident for children in more than nine months,” said the head of the Monitoring Mission, Danielle Bell.
Entire families affected
“At least three families suffered numerous losses,” she stressed. In particular, among the dead were a mother with a child, a father with a child and parents with three children. This, as Bell noted, demonstrates the suffering that Russia’s war against Ukraine brings to civilians. She recalled that the civilian population is especially vulnerable to long-range weapons.
The site of the tragedy
Staff of the UN Monitoring Mission visited the scene shortly after the attack on Saturday. They talk about grief-stricken relatives who tried to remove the bodies of their loved ones from the rubble of a partially collapsed building, and rescue teams who cleared them of the rubble.
Mission staff also describe scene of the tragedy: some household items thrown out of the apartments by the force of the explosion were stuck on tree branches.
Civilian casualties
According to UN human rights activists, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, more than 10 thousand civilians have been killed and more than 20 thousand injured. These are only those cases that have been documented; the real number of victims is much higher, Mission experts warn. Most people were injured by long-range explosive weapons such as rockets, drones, and artillery shells.