Destroyed Ukraine military hardware and the bodies of slain soldiers near Debaltseve. February, 2015.
The United Nations says the number of civilian casualties in fighting in eastern Ukraine is
back to last year's highs.
Fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed
more than 9,400 people since April 2014.
The UN Human Rights Office said on August 3 that
it documented 69 civilian casualties in June, including 12 dead.
This is nearly double the figure for May 2016 and
the highest figure since August 2015.
The figure rose further to
73 civilian casualties in July, including eight dead.
More than half of all the casualties recorded in the past two months were
caused by shelling, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
"Civilians are once again having to flee to improvised bomb shelters in their basements, sometimes overnight, with increasing frequency," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said.
A cease-fire deal signed in Minsk in February 2015 was meant to halt the fighting, but many of its key points -- including the complete withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line -- have not been implemented.
Comment: It should be pretty clear where these terrorists are getting their chemical weapons. The US has been supporting ISIS financially and arming them, so supplying them with chemical weapons wouldn't be too much of a stretch. It's especially ironic, since the US at one point claimed the Assad government used chemical weapons against its own people, and use that as a pretext for "regime change". It was a claim that was proven false, and now the groups they are supporting are doing exactly what they were claiming Assad was doing.
Update: Local officials now report that at least 7 civilians have died and 25 more are injured from shells containing toxic gas: