More than 330 killed in Ukraine since truce
More than 330 people have been killed in Ukraine since a fragile truce began a month ago, the United Nations said Wednesday, warning that five million people were affected by continuing violence.
A report from the UN rights agency also found that before the September 5 ceasefire, pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine had seen their numbers significantly bolstered by an influx of foreign fighters, including apparently Russian citizens.
“While the ceasefire is a very welcome step towards ending the fighting in eastern Ukraine, I call on all parties to genuinely respect and uphold it, and to halt the attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure once and for all,” UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.
His office said 331 deaths were recorded between September 6 and Monday, although it stressed that some of those deaths may have occurred before the peace pact was signed in Minsk on September 5 but were not logged until afterwards.
The toll does not however include the 12 people, mostly civilians, killed Tuesday in increasingly bloody clashes, amid fears the truce will dissolve into all-out warfare.
Mortar and shelling attacks have killed 14 civilians since the weekend — one of the deadliest spells in six months of fighting that has killed nearly 3,400 people across the mainly Russian-speaking east.
Counting the 298 people who died in the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in July, the overall toll stands at 3,660 deaths as of Monday, the UN rights office said.
As of mid-September, at least 36 children had been killed in the fighting, and at least 82 figured among the nearly 8,200 wounded.
The UN warned that the tallies were “conservative”, stressing that there was a problem of under-reporting of military casualties, and that many bodies were being buried without being counted, or reportedly being taken to Russia.
‘Russians citizens’ fighting
In its latest report covering the period from August 18 to September 16, Zeid’s office meanwhile found that before the ceasefire, “an increasing number of foreign fighters were reported to be participating in the fighting, including citizens of the Russian Federation.”
It said that former Russian servicemen and active duty personnel on leave were allegedly among them.
During the period covered by the report, pro-Russian armed groups had “continued to terrorise the population in areas under their control, pursuing killings, abductions, torture, ill-treatment and other serious human rights abuses, including destruction of housing and seizure of property,” it said.
It also detailed continued allegations of human rights violations by some pro-Kyiv volunteer battalions.
Between August 24 and September 5, the report also noted “a sharp increase in detentions by the armed groups” on the pro-Russian side, as well as “alarming reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, including mock executions and sexual violence.”
People held by Ukrainian armed forces and police had also faced ill-treatment, according to the report, which also noted that hundreds of people had been reported missing or abducted.
Zeid lamented that more than five million people living in the areas were affected by the violence.
“For almost half a year, residents of the areas affected by the armed conflict have been deprived of their fundamental rights to education, to adequate health care, to housing and to opportunities to earn a living,” he said.
The fighting forced nearly 40,000 small and medium businesses in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions to close, leaving thousands of people without income, the report said.
Especially vulnerable are the nearly 375,800 people who as of October 2 have been displaced inside Ukraine by the fighting, the statement said.