U.N. representative urges immediate ceasefire after large-scale strikes kill civilians in Ukraine

A United Nations representative told the Security Council that overnight between July 30 and July 31 a large-scale Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv killed at least 31 people, including five children, and injured 1,159 people, according to the representative’s account to the council.

The representative said the strikes damaged “25–27 locations across four districts of the capital,” including a school, a preschool, the pediatric wing of a hospital and a university building, and that an entire section of an apartment block was destroyed, leaving people trapped beneath burning rubble. Humanitarian partners, including United Nations agencies and local non-governmental organizations in Kyiv, provided immediate emergency assistance, the representative said.

The U.N. official said the same night attacks occurred in seven other regions — Vinnytsia, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy and Chernihiv — and that at least 120 civilian casualties were reported across the country that night. The representative added that frontline areas…