Donbas conflict kills over 9,000 people – UN

30,346 people have become the victims of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Of them, more than 9,000 people have been killed and more than 21,000 have been injured.

This was stated by Ivan Šimonović, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, speaking at the 31st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the UN press service reports.

According to him, almost a thousand unidentified bodies remain in the Ukrainian morgues.

He noted that even though no large-scale indiscriminate shelling of populated areas was taking place, military objects continued to be embedded in residential areas on both sides of the contact line, endangering residents and disrupting their daily lives.

He added that the Ukrainian authorities had already registered 1.6 million internally displaced persons.

Šimonović stated that the restoration of Ukraine’s full and effective control over the part of the border with the Russian Federation would help stop the flow of weapons and fighters from Russia.

According to the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, the residents of the territories controlled by the armed groups live in especially dire conditions. The information about unlawful detentions and tortures comes from there.

He also said that the reports on forced disappearances, detentions and even tortures committed by the Ukrainian military and security forces were being sent to the human rights office from other regions of Ukraine, including Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

The human rights activist expressed concern over the fact that the people responsible for the deaths during the Maidan protests had not been established yet. According to him, the delay in the investigation undermines the credibility of the criminal justice system of Ukraine.

The Assistant Secretary-General also told about the human rights violations in Crimea.