The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has released a report stating that it has every reason to believe that the rocket that hit the building of a cafe in the village of Groza on October 5 was fired by the Russian military.
The missile killed 59 people – the cafe was holding a wake at the time. This strike, according to Ukrainian authorities, was the largest in terms of casualties in the Kharkiv region since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
The report is based on information gathered and verified by the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), which visited Groza twice and interviewed local residents.
The victims of the airstrike were 36 women, 22 men and an eight-year-old boy – civilians who were attending the wake after the funeral of a local resident, a member of the Ukrainian Air Force.
The report describes in detail the devastating consequences of the missile strike on Groza: 15 families lost two or more family members, the explosion destroyed a cafe and a small shop. The remains of many of the dead were identified by DNA tests.
One man interviewed, Volodymyr, said he could not believe that his wife, son and daughter-in-law were no longer alive.
"I can't sleep, I can't eat... I'm walking around, hoping to see my wife somewhere," he said.
Another local resident said that her daughter's friend was identified only by her manicure: rescuers found her hand.
The UN report emphasizes that there were no military personnel or military objectives near the cafe. Ukraine's Defense Ministry blamed Moscow for the attack on the cafe, adding that there were no military targets in the area.
In response, the Russian military repeated its traditional statement in such situations that strikes are only carried out on military and energy facilities in Ukraine.
Background. Earlier it became known that the UN sent a team to investigate the strike on the village of Groza and the massacre of people.