The number of members of armed groups who have been killed is unknown, but some may have been counted within the numbers of civilians killed. 29. Since 10 July, there have been at least 44 more civilian casualties, including two children, for a total of 522 people, as reported by civil medical establishments and regional administrations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Most of these recent have been the result of intense shelling of villages, towns and cities, the so-called ‘collateral damage’ to the fighting that is taking place in and around population centres. 30. In this report, the HRMMU has enumerated cases where people were killed by indiscriminate shelling. However, of the figures above, the Government has said that most of the deaths were by gunshot wounds. 31. The armed groups are locating their military assets in and conducting attacks from densely populated areas thereby putting the whole civilian population at risk. Locating military objectives within or near a densely populated area, and launching attacks from such areas may constitute a violation of international humanitarian law. 32. Human Rights Watch and Memorial, sometimes accompanied by Ukrainian human rights defenders, have visited the town of Krasny Liman, and the villages of Stanista-Luganskaya and Staraya Kondrashovka to investigate the circumstances in which civilians have been killed. In Stanista-Luganskaya and Staraya Kondrashovka, at least 11 people were killed including 2 children on 2 July; in Krasny Liman, shelling hit the Railway Hospital, killing the chief surgeon and wounding three others. 33. As the increasing number of casualties in the past few days attests, there has not been sufficient precaution taken to preventing death and injury to civilians. Recent examples include the shelling of the village of Maryinka and of the Petrovskiy district of Donetsk on 11 and 12 July when at least 16 people were killed, including one child. There was an air strike on the town of Snizhne in the Donetsk region on 15 July, and at least 11 people were killed from shrapnel wounds and eight more wounded, including one child. On 11 July, Ukrainian forces claimed to have destroyed a camp of an armed group located in the premises of an empty school in the village of Golmovsky, near Horlivka. The armed group claimed that one civilian had been killed during that air strike. On 13 July, two civilians were killed in Krasnogrovka in the Donetsk region. On 15 July, the Mayor of Luhansk announced that 17 Luhansk residents were killed in residential areas during attacks on 14 July and 73 people received shrapnel and gunshot wounds during the fighting. On 15-16 July, one civilian died and nine more were injured as a result of gunfire in Luhansk. During the hostilities, paramedics reported responding to 160 calls. 34. However, not all of the deaths and injuries can be attributed to reported shelling or air strikes of towns/villages. Some deaths had other causes. For example anti-personnel landmines have killed at least three and injured two others; people have been killed when the passenger buses they were travelling in were shot at; and people have been killed when travelling in their car. Three traffic policemen were killed at close range and without warning, according to an eyewitness, in Donetsk city on 3 July. A criminal investigation has been opened into the police killings. A motorist was killed when armed groups stole the car he was driving in Noviy Svit (Donetsk region). There have been reports of people being used as ‘human shields’ by the armed groups, as for example in Horlivka on 14 June. In this incident, after two people were killed and 8 injured, reportedly during an airstrike, the armed group then threatened to organise “human shields”, by placing detainees on the roof of a city municipal building, The detainees, included five servicemen from the Kirovograd region and two 25th army brigade officers and their driver who were all from Dnepropetrovsk region. 138 | P a g e