09/04/2022 13:18

Commissioner: Rashists kill and maim Ukrainian children every day

As of 10 a.m. on April 9, 2022, according to the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations and other sources that need confirmation, 176 (+7 per day) children have died and 324 children (+18 per day) have been injured since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.

It is impossible to establish the actual number of dead and wounded children due to the fact that the occupying forces are actively fighting in Ukrainian cities.

As a result of yesterday's shelling of the railway station in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region, by occupation troops, 5 children were killed and 16 were injured.  On the racket that bombed the station, there was an inscription "For children."

The tortured and burned bodies of three people, one of whom belongs to a child, were found in the Izium district of Kharkiv region.

A shot car was found near Gostomel in the Kyiv region, in which a family with a child who was a little over a year old died.

So far, Lviv medics have rescued two boys from Mariupol who came under attack by the occupiers.  2-year-old Artem and 13-year-old Ivan were injured on the way out of town.

The enemy continues to strike with various weapons, trying to completely destroy the infrastructure and residential areas of Ukrainian cities - as a result of daily bombings and shelling, 928 educational institutions were damaged.  84 of them were completely destroyed.

Such actions by the Russian occupation forces are a direct violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guarantee the right of children to life and security in all circumstances.

I appeal to the UN Commission for Investigation Human Rights Violations during Russia's Military Invasion of Ukraine  and the expert mission set up by the OSCE participating States under the Moscow Mechanism to take into account these facts of war crimes and crimes against humanity and violations of children's rights in Ukraine.

I call on international partners to close the skies over Ukraine and provide weapons to fight the aggressor country of Russia!