Ukraine says war has killed 165 children, wounded 266
International Desk, Apr 5 (EFE).- The war in Ukraine has killed 165 children and wounded at least 266, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday.
There are fears that the actual toll could be far higher, as authorities have not completed gathering data due to difficulties in evaluating areas occupied by Russian forces in the Donbas, Mariupol and recently liberated towns around the capital Kyiv.
“More than 431 children have been affected in Ukraine as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation,” Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram. “As of the morning of April 5, 2022, 165 children were killed and 266 children received injuries of varying severity.”
The statement added that 869 education facilities had been targeted by Russian shelling and, of those, 83 had been destroyed.
The prosecutor’s report gave an account of an atrocity committed during the occupation of Vorzel, in the Kyiv region where “the aggressor’s servicemen threw a smoke grenade into the basement of one of the houses, where a 14-year-old child and a woman were hiding, and then opened fire.”
The child died instantly, and the mother died two days later, it added.
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said Tuesday that around 1,200 war crimes had been documented in the Kyiv region alone.
According to Unicef, 2 million children have been forced to flee Ukraine and some 2.5 million have been internally displaced.
The United Nations agency has warned children in Ukraine face a heightened risk of human trafficking and exploitation.
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