A United Nations agency says it has found "reasonable grounds" to believe that a missile that killed 59 civilians at a cafe in the Ukrainian village of Hroza earlier this month was launched by Russian forces and that there was "no indication" of military personnel or "any other legitimate military targets" at the time of the attack.
The United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) said in a report on October 31 that, based on information collected and verified by the UN's Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, "the Russian armed forces either failed to do everything feasible to verify that the target was a military objective, or deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects."
"The 59 people killed were civilians, not participating in hostilities, making the attack one of the deadliest individual incidents for civilians since February 24, 2022. OHCHR also has reasonable grounds to believe that the reception was the intended target of an attack by the Russian armed forces, using a precision weapon, likely an Iskander missile," the report added.
The October 5 attack ripped through a cafe in Hroza, a village some 85 kilometers southeast of Kharkiv, killing 59 people, including a child, who were attending a memorial service for a deceased fellow villager in what was this year's deadliest attack by Moscow's forces on Ukrainian civilians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the strike was a "deliberate terrorist attack," while the White House called the assault "incredibly horrifying for the people of Ukraine" and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres demanded that such attacks be halted immediately.
"The Russian Federation is urged to acknowledge responsibility for the civilian casualties resulting from the attack, to conduct a full and transparent investigation into the attack to hold those responsible to account and prevent similar attacks from happening in the future, and to provide access to remedy, including reparations, for direct and indirect victims," the UN report, released on October 31, said.