The Ukrainian Children’s Prosecutor’s Office denounced that at least 79 children have died since the Russian invasion began

At least 79 children have died and a hundred have been injured since the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops began on February 24, according to a report published this Saturday by the Ukrainian Children’s Prosecutor’s Office on its Telegram account.

Most of the deaths included in this report, whose data cannot be verified by an independent source, have occurred in Russian attacks against the country’s main cities.

“During the 16 days of the war in Ukraine, 79 children have already died and almost 100 have been injured. Most of the victims were in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson and Zhytomyr regions,” the report said.

According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, this figure is not final “due to the lack of opportunity to inspect the places of attack, where the Russian armed forces are carrying out their hostile activities”.

So far, more than 280 educational institutions have been destroyed, 9 of them completely.

In the Donetsk region, in the east of the country, 110 educational institutions were damaged, in the Sumy region, also in the east, 28 were affected, and in Kyiv, 17, in addition to a dozen medical centers for minors.

According to the document, an average of 17 educational institutions have been destroyed daily by Russian attacks since the invasion ordered by the president of that country, Vladimir Putin, began.

About seven million children are deprived of the opportunity to study due to active hostilities on the territory of Ukraine and the deliberate destruction of such institutions, the Prosecutor’s Office denounces.

In another order, a mosque that housed 80 civilians, including Turks, was bombed in Mariupol, a port in southeastern Ukraine where thousands of people have been besieged for days, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported on Saturday.

“The mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roxolana in Mariupol was bombed by the Russian invaders,” the ministry said on Twitter.

“More than 80 adults and children are taking refuge there, including Turkish citizens,” he added, without specifying when the bombing occurred.

This strategic city, bombarded for days, suffers a devastating siege.

The inhabitants, entrenched in cellars, are cut off, without water, gas or electricity and even fight to get food. It is an “almost desperate” situation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned on Friday.

“Mariupol is now the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet “, with “1,582 civilians killed in 12 days”, the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Friday.

A children’s hospital and a maternity hospital were attacked on Wednesday, killing three people and injuring many others, sparking an international outcry.

In this context, a new evacuation corridor attempt is planned to allow civilians to leave the city towards Zaporizhia, some 200 km to the northwest, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

For days now, the Ukrainians have claimed that the Russian army has been shelling the evacuation route.