GENEVA — As rescue workers continued to bring out bodies from the rubble of an apartment block struck by a Russian missile in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Saturday, the United Nations said on Monday that it had confirmed the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians in the 11 months since Russia invaded.
United Nations monitors in Ukraine said those killed included 2,784 men, 1,875 women and another 1,939 adults whose gender was unknown. Those known to have died included 398 children, the monitors reported. The numbers include only those the United Nations has been able to corroborate, and the U.N. acknowledges that the full civilian toll is much higher.
While U.N. monitors reported that 104 Ukrainian civilians had been killed in the first half of January, the U.N. human rights office in Geneva said those deaths would not have included victims of Saturday’s missile strike on Dnipro, which destroyed a nine-story apartment building. By Monday, Ukrainian officials said 40 people had died in that attack and more than 30 people remained unaccounted for.
The rate of civilian deaths confirmed by the United Nations had edged lower in the fall of 2022 but looks set to rise this month under Russia’s bombardment targeting critical infrastructure in urban centers across Ukraine, including the western city of Lviv, the capital, Kyiv, and the eastern city of Kharkiv.
