The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced this Friday the deployment of a field team to investigate the airstrike in the Ukrainian village of Hroza that left at least 52 dead during a funeral on Thursday. .
A missile hit a cafe and grocery store in the town as people gathered to honor a dead Ukrainian soldier. The OCHR said it had probably been fired by Russia, but it was too early to say for sure.
“United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, who saw with his own eyes the horrific impact of such attacks, is deeply shocked and condemns these killings,” OHCHR spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell told reporters. in Geneva. “He has deployed a field team to the scene to talk to survivors and gather more information.”
The Kharkiv region has announced three days of mourning following the attack, the deadliest in the region since the Russian invasion more than 19 months ago. This has also been one of the deadliest attacks since the start of the war.
“At this point, it’s obviously very difficult to establish with absolute certainty what happened,” Throssell said. “But given the location, given the fact that the cafe was hit, the indications are that it was a Russian missile.” However, he added that the attack needed to be further examined.
Throssell said OHCHR’s human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has established the names of 35 people who died in the attack, including 19 women, 15 men and an eight-year-old child.
“Before the Russian invasion, the village’s population was about 300 people,” Throssell said. “It is not clear how many residents were still living there, but it is clear that with the high number of people killed, everyone in this small community has been affected.”
