Russian invasion has killed at least 549 civilians in Ukraine, 41 of them children, but United Nations believes toll is ‘considerably’ higher

Ukrainian volunteers help remove a dead civilian body, as Russian forces continue to besiege the residential neighborhood, in Irpin, Ukraine, Monday, March 7, 2022.

The United Nations said Thursday that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has killed at least 548 people, 41 of whom were children.

The U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says that at least 957 civilians have been injured since the attack began two weeks ago.

The office said that most of the civilian casualties were caused by the use of explosives with a wide impact area.

The OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, especially in government-controlled territory.

The OHCHR said that getting information from locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed.

There are allegations of hundreds of civilian casualties in the towns of Volnovakha, Mariupol, and Izium, but casualty statistics from those areas were not included in the report.

According to the report, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights has said that 61 children have been killed and 100 injured.

The office of the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner uses information from contacts and partners in places where civilians have been killed.

Ukrainian officials condemned a Russian airstrike on a children's hospital in Mariupol as a war crime. Three people, one of them a child, were killed in the attack, which left other children trapped under rubble, officials said.

According to the World Health Organization, Russian forces have attacked medical facilities 18 times.