From 4 a.m. on 24 February 2022, when the Russian Federation’s armed attack against Ukraine started, to 24:00 midnight on 12 March 2022 (local time), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 1,663 civilian casualties in the country: 596 killed and 1,067 injured. This included:
- a total of 596 killed (124 men, 85 women, 6 girls, and 10 boys, as well as 27 children and 344 adults whose sex is yet unknown)
- a total of 1,067 injured (97 men, 69 women, 14 girls, and 4 boys, as well as 39 children and 844 adults whose sex is yet unknown)
- In Donetsk and Luhansk regions: 695 casualties (137 killed and 558 injured)
- On Government-controlled territory: 542 casualties (111 killed and 431 injured)
- On territory controlled by the self-proclaimed ‘republics’: 153 casualties (26 killed and 127 injured)
- In other regions of Ukraine (the city of Kyiv, and Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Zhytomyr regions), which were under Government control when casualties occurred: 968 casualties (459 killed and 509 injured)
Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes.
OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, especially in Government-controlled territory and especially in recent days, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, Izium (Kharkiv region), and Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region) where there are allegations of hundreds of civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.
OHCHR notes the report of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, according to which as of 9 a.m. (local time) 13 March, 85 children had been killed and more than 100 injured. OHCHR also notes the report of the Head of the Investigative Department of the National Police of Kharkiv Region, according to which as of 6 p.m. (local time) 12 March, 205 civilians had been killed in the region.