Ukraine says hundreds of people have been killed so far in Russia’s invasion, with fighting widespread across the country and Russian forces advancing on the capital, Kyiv.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ordered wide-ranging attacks on Ukraine on Thursday, hitting multiple cities and bases with air strikes or shelling, and attacking by land and sea.
Ukraine’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that at least 352 civilians, including 14 children, have been killed since the Russian invasion began.
A further 1,684 people have been wounded, it said.
The United Nations said late on Saturday that it has confirmed at least 240 civilian casualties from the fighting, including at least 64 people killed, though it believed the “real figures are considerably higher” because many reports of casualties remain unconfirmed.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) relayed the count from the UN human rights office, which has strict methodologies and verification procedures about the toll from conflict.
It is not clear how many Ukrainian soldiers have died during the Russian invasion.
Moscow has not released casualty figures either.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser said 4,500 Russian soldiers had been killed, and Moscow has acknowledged that Russian soldiers had been killed and wounded. But it has said that its losses were far lower than those suffered by Ukraine.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify the casualty figures.
At least 368,000 people have now fled Ukraine into Poland and other neighbouring countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Sunday.
Kyiv reported on Friday that 18 people were killed at a military base near the Black Sea port of Odesa in the deadliest single strike of Russia’s attack.
The mayor of Mariupol claimed on Thursday that three civilians had been killed in the eastern port city and six others injured in Russia’s invasion.
Emergency services said a boy was killed in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region after shelling struck an apartment building.
Ukraine’s military on Thursday said it had destroyed four Russian tanks on a road near Kharkiv, killed 50 troops near a town in the Luhansk region and downed six Russian warplanes elsewhere in the east.
Ukraine also said a military plane with 14 people on board crashed south of Kyiv on Thursday with officials still determining how many people died, while a transport plane crashed in Russia, killing the crew.
Ukrainian forces downed an aircraft over Kyiv early on Friday, which then crashed into a residential building and set it on fire, said Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to the interior minister. It was unclear if the aircraft was crewed.
Russia denied reports its aircraft or armoured vehicles had been destroyed. Russian-backed separatists claimed to have downed two Ukrainian planes.
Russia has crippled the operations of more than 800 Ukrainian military infrastructure sites so far, the defence ministry in Moscow said on Saturday.
Ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said 14 military airfields, 19 command posts, 24 S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems and 48 radar stations were destroyed.
In addition, eight Ukrainian naval boats were hit, he said.
Ukraine said Russian forces have seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant – prompting concern from international nuclear watchdogs.
‘Brutal act of war’
After weeks of denying plans to invade, Putin justified his actions in a televised address early on Thursday, asserting that the attack was needed to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine – a claim Ukraine and its allies have slammed as false and a pretext for a wider invasion.
Putin also accused the United States and its allies of ignoring Russia’s demands for Ukraine to be barred from joining NATO and for security guarantees. He has also called Ukraine an artificial creation and denied its right to statehood.
After Russia launched attacks on Thursday, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy declared martial law, cut diplomatic ties with Moscow and called on civilians to join the fight to defend Ukraine.
“As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history,” Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter. “Russia has embarked on a path of evil, but Ukraine is defending itself and won’t give up its freedom.”
Jens Stoltenberg, the chief of the NATO alliance, said Russia’s “brutal act of war” shattered peace in Europe, and joined a chorus of world leaders who decried the attack, which could cause massive casualties, topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government and upend the post-Cold War security order.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has voiced alarm over an expected health emergency in Ukraine.
“Amid the conflict rapidly unfolding in Ukraine, the WHO Regional Office for Europe reiterates its deepest concern for the safety, health and wellbeing of all civilians impacted by the crisis in the country and possibly beyond,” the office said in a statement, warning any further escalation could result in a humanitarian catastrophe.
The European arm of the world health body added it was working closely “with all UN partners in rapidly scaling up readiness to respond to the expected health emergency triggered by the conflict”.
