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GENEVA: Civilian casualties in the war raging between Russia and Ukraine rose 37 percent in the first half of this year, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
Russia and Ukraine — who both deny targeting civilians — have stepped up daily strikes on each other in recent months, as US-led talks on ending the nearly four-and-a-half year conflict remain stalled.
Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, told reporters in Geneva that the unit documented 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 injured.
That was a 37 percent increase from the same period in the previous year and “almost doubled what we documented in 2024”, she said. Bell said the escalation was in part being driven by increasing use of long-range ballistic missiles and drones, “affecting densely populated urban areas that are far away from the front line”.
