The United Nations said Tuesday that civilian casualties in the war raging between Russia and Ukraine rose 37 percent in the first half of this year.
"We documented 1,396 civilians killed (and) 7,978 injured... that amounts to a 37 percent increase from the same period in the previous year," Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, told reporters in Geneva.
Also Tuesday, a strike on a ship in the Black Sea carrying propane to the Ukrainian port of Reni wounded three seafarers and forced the crew's evacuation, Romania's president said.
"Last night, the LPG tanker Gas Lisbon, flying the Liberian flag, was struck outside Romanian territorial waters, approximately 20 nautical miles off the Romanian coast," Nicusor Dan said on X.
While the authorities were still working to establish who had hit the tanker, Dan claimed the incident was "most likely part of the Russian Federation's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
The strike on the ship, which was carrying more than 3,790 tons of propane from the port of Alexandria in Egypt, caused a major fire on board the vessel.
After the strike, two Romanian rescue vessels evacuated the ship's 17 crew members, including three who "required emergency medical care", the emergency services said.
"Two victims had burns covering approximately 10-15 percent of their bodies, and the third had suffered multiple wounds and was bleeding," the statement said.
The Black Sea has been a regular theater of confrontation between Ukraine and Russia since the Kremlin's full-scale invasion began in 2022.
