UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday “strongly condemned” a missile assault carried out by Russia on the Ukrainian port metropolis of Odessa which brought about civilian casualties and broken the Transfiguration Cathedral.
“In addition to the appalling toll the war is taking on civilian lives, this is yet another attack in an area protected under the World Heritage Convention, in violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric mentioned in a written assertion.
Noting that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has verified harm to 270 cultural websites in Ukraine, he mentioned “the Secretary-General is concerned about the threat that this war increasingly poses to Ukrainian culture and heritage.”
“The Secretary-General urges the Russian Federation to immediately cease attacks against cultural property protected by widely ratified international normative instruments,” Dujarric added.
Ukraine mentioned that at the very least one particular person was killed and 22 others had been injured within the in a single day Russian missile strike on Odessa.
The Russian Defense Ministry in a press release denied that it focused the church, saying the targets had been “located at a safe distance from the temple complex.”
“The planning of high-precision strikes against the military and terrorist infrastructure of the Kyiv regime is carried out on the basis of carefully verified and confirmed information through several channels, deliberately excluding the destruction of civilian facilities as well as objects of cultural and historical heritage,” the assertion mentioned.
Source: www.anews.com.tr
