Nearly 7,000 civilians have now been killed in Ukraine war: UN

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that nearly 7,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in Ukraine’s war with neighboring Russia. 

In a news release on Tuesday, the OHCHR said its has recorded 17,831 civilian casualties in the country, including 6,884 killed and 10,947 injured. 

Of the 6,884 civilians killed, 2,719 have been tallied as men, 1,832 as women and 391 as children, along with 1,942 whose sex is unknown.

The agency also said that the Donetsk and Luhansk regions saw the most casualties, as officials reported 9,695 casualties (4,052 killed and 5,643 injured) in those two regions. 

In other Ukrainian towns, regions and cities that were under the government’s control when the casualties took place, officials reported a total of 8,136 casualties (2,832 killed and 5,304 injured).

The agency also noted that most of the casualties reported were caused by explosive weapons with wide area effects, such as shelling from heavy artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, missiles and air strikes.

“OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration,” the agency said in its news release. “This concerns, for example, Mariupol (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Lysychansk, Popasna, and Sievierodonetsk (Luhansk region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties.”

The latest numbers come after an OHCHR report published in September detailed 5,827 civilian deaths and another 8,421 wounded in the conflict.

Speaking at a conference last month, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said that 40,000 civilians have been killed in the war, which began in February, and that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the conflict as well.