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Artillery strikes on the besieged Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv hit a humanitarian aid center as well as residential areas, Ukrainian officials said.
The attacks, which were reported past 7:50 p.m. Thursday local time, struck a center where humanitarian aid was being issued, according to Vitaliy Kim, the region’s governor.
“This has become a pattern,” Kim said in a Telegram post.
A projectile also exploded a few meters away from a private residential building, damaging the structure and two neighboring houses, according to Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sinkevych, who is understood to be referring to the same attack.
One woman was wounded as a result of the night shelling, the official revealed in a statement.
Kim did not identify who launched the strikes, but Sinkevych said the projectile that damaged the residential building was Russian.
A Russian missile attack from earlier that day hit areas of the Admiral Makarov National University of Shipbuilding, according to Sinkevych.
“Fortunately, the missile struck an open space, and educational equipment remained intact. Just a warehouse was partially destroyed,” the mayor wrote in a Telegram post.
The attack also damaged apartment blocks and a nearby church, the official said.
Russia’s invasion has resulted in the deaths of 5,237 civilians in Ukraine, including 348 children, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in its most recent casualty report.
A total of 7,035 civilians have also been injured due to the ongoing conflict.
The actual figures may be “considerably higher” due to the delays in the receipt of information as well as the need for reports to be verified, according to the OHCHR.
“Most” of the civilian casualties recorded in Russia’s invasion “were caused by the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects, including shelling from heavy artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, missiles and air strikes,” the agency said.
Russia’s forces have repeatedly been accused of deliberately striking civilian targets in the war. But the country has denied or deflected responsibility for the reported attacks on civilians.
Killing, torturing or taking hostage of non-combatants in war is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Meanwhile, “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity [and] carried out unlawfully and wantonly,” is considered a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Rescuers evacuate a dog from a damaged residential building following a missile strike, amid Russia’s invasion on Ukraine, in Mykolaiv, Ukraine in this still image taken from a handout video June 29, 2022. Courtesy of State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS .
Photo: Reuters / STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE OF UKRAI
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