Mariupol, a symbol of the war’s human cost, likely was Ukraine’s ‘deadliest place’ through April.

The southern port of Mariupol has become an emblem of the human toll of the war in Ukraine, a besieged city where trapped residents went for weeks without electricity or water, and where people dug trenches to accommodate the mounting numbers of bodies.

On Thursday, the top U.N. human rights official said that Mariupol likely was the “deadliest place in Ukraine” in the first three months of Russia’s invasion. Thousands of civilians are believed to have died there, she said.

The official, Michelle Bachelet, the high commissioner for human rights, issuing an updated assessment on Mariupol, also said that up to 90 percent of its residential buildings had been either damaged or destroyed.

So far, Ms. Bachelet said, U.N. investigators have verified 1,348 civilian deaths attributable directly to hostilities in Mariupol, adding that the actual civilian death toll was “likely thousands higher.” Read more

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