Ukraine children’s hospital likely received a direct hit: UN rights monitors

The head of the human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said on Tuesday that early analysis of video footage from the children’s hospital in Kyiv where dozens were killed and injured during Russian bombardment indicated “a high likelihood” that it suffered a direct hit.

Danielle Bell, head of the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said that available evidence so far pointed to “a direct hit of a KH-101 missile launched by the Russian Federation”:

“The factors suggesting that it was a direct hit are based on video footage, which shows the technical specification of the type of weapon that was used. It shows the weapon directly impacting the hospital rather than being intercepted in the air. And thirdly… my military expert visited the site yesterday and observed damages at the site that were consistent with a direct hit.”

At a Security Council meeting in New York on Tuesday, the Russian Federation denied responsibility for the attacks, blaming instead Ukrainian missile defence systems for the heavy damage inflicted on the hospital in Kyiv.

Arbitrary detentions and impunity widespread in Libya, warns UN’s Türk

The desperate plight of migrants and refugees tortured, trafficked and sold in Libya should prompt the international community to consider halting its agreement with the north African country on asylum seekers and migration, UN rights chief Volker Türk said on Tuesday.

Addressing the Human Rights Council, Mr. Türk said that the abuse was happening “at scale”, along with forced labour, extortion (and) starvation in intolerable conditions of detention”.

Mass expulsions, the sale of human beings including children are also widespread in Libya, Mr. Türk continued, maintaining that collusion between State and non-State actors was responsible.

The UN rights chief’s concerns over the treatment of vulnerable people trying to cross the Mediterranean to the European Union follow repeated allegations by independent rights experts of alleged reckless behaviour by the Libyan Coast Guard - including firing at or near migrant vessels and ramming boats to make them capsize, before returning the survivors to Libya.

Gazans reeling from intensified malnutrition, heat risks

In Gaza, soaring temperatures, hunger and unsanitary conditions are posing an ever more deadly threat to a population under constant attack, UN humanitarians warned on Tuesday.

UN health agency spokesperson Tarik Jašarević said that according to the enclave’s health authorities, 34 people have died of malnutrition and dehydration so far in Kamal Adwan hospital alone, where 60 cases of severe acute malnutrition were detected last week.

“Malnutrition is definitely one of the factors that reduces the immunity, especially of the vulnerable population, (the) elderly and children, who then can’t really cope with any disease, any pathogen that they can get,” the UN health agency official said, as he went on to describe how Gazans faced a “vicious circle of not having access to enough food, to clean water, to clean sanitation (and) not having access to basic health services”.