MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - Russian drone attacks against civilians in the Kherson region of Ukraine constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, independent UN-appointed human rights investigators concluded in a new report published on Wednesday.
'Russian armed forces have committed the crimes against humanity of murder and the war crimes of attacking civilians, through a months-long pattern of drone attacks targeting civilians on the right bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Province,' the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said.
Attacks have been carried out since July 2024 in Kherson city and 16 localities stretching over more than 100 kilometers in riverfront areas under Ukrainian Government control.
They are ongoing and nearly 150 civilians have been killed and hundreds more injured so far, according to official sources.
'The recurrence of these attacks for over 10 months, against multiple civilian targets and in a wide geographic area, demonstrates that they are widespread and systematic and have been planned and organised, requiring the mobilization and allocation of necessary resources,' the report said.
The Commission said it prepared the report after examining more than 300 publicly available videos of attacks and 600 text posts on Telegram channels and identified victims and interviewing residents from affected areas.
Most victims were men, but women and children also were affected, the report said.
Russian forces mostly used civilian drones that are widely commercially available, which were then modified.
'The weaponized versions of these drones allow their operators, via an embedded camera, to remotely track, aim, and drop explosives on targets. They can return to their point of origin to be reused,' the report stated.
'The recurrent drone attacks, the widely disseminated videos showing them, and numerous posts explicitly exhorting the population to leave suggest a coordinated state policy, on the part of the Russian authorities, to force the population of Kherson Province to leave the area,' according to investigators.
They concluded Russian forces may have committed the crime against humanity of forcible transfer of population.
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