GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations human rights office has found “reasonable grounds” to conclude a missile strike that killed 59 people in a cafe in the Ukrainian village of Hroza was launched by Russia’s armed forces, the office said on Tuesday.
“Today, we are publishing a report into the events of Oct. 5 that concludes there are reasonable grounds to believe that the missile was launched by Russian armed forces,” Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva.
She added that “there was no indication of military personnel or any other legitimate military targets at or adjacent to the cafe at the time of the attack.”
Ukraine said a Russian missile hit a cafe in the village in the Kharkiv region this month as people gathered to mourn a fallen Ukrainian soldier. Moscow denies targeting civilians in its invasion, a position it repeated in relation to the strike on Hroza.
(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Rachel More)
