Siblings killed in Russian bombing of village in Sumy region

The Armed Forces of Russian Federation struck the village of Mohrytsia in the Sumy district with guided aerial bombs (GABs) on August 8, 2024. According to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency, citing Volodymyr Artiukh, head of the Sumy Oblast Military Administration, Russians hit a village school there, claiming the lives of a 22-year-old man and a 6-year-old girl.

Artiukh revealed that the deceased were a brother and sister who were in the schoolyard at the time of the strike.

He reported that Russian forces had dropped 56 GABs on settlements across four border districts of Sumy Oblast over the past 24 hours. The attacks injured two more civilians, though Artiukh did not specify their exact locations.

According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, at least 219 civilians were killed and 1,018 injured in Ukraine in July 2024, which makes it the deadliest month for civilians since October 2022. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine stated that the high number of casualties in July continues a trend of increasing civilian casualties since March 2024.

The UN pointed out that a large-scale coordinated attack launched by the Russian Armed Forces across Ukraine on July 8, 2024, killed at least 43 civilians, including 5 children, and injured 147, including 7 children, in Kyiv City, Dnipro City, Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region) and Kyiv region.

One missile in the 8 July attack also struck a hospital complex in Kyiv city, destroying the toxicology department of the Okhmatdyt National Children’s Hospital and significantly damaging the Center for Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery.

In June and July, the most intensive offensive military operations by the Russian Armed Forces shifted from the northern Kharkiv region to the Donetsk region, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine noted. As a result, verified civilian casualties in the Donetsk region increased from 125 civilians killed or injured in May to 224 in June and 269 in July 2024.

The vast majority of civilian casualties (90%) and damage to educational and health facilities (86%) continued to occur in Government-controlled territory.

As for now, it is impossible to determine the exact number of casualties, as Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and the representatives of the ICC have no access to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.