UN says close to 8,000 killed in east Ukraine

Children hand flowers to a Ukrainian serviceman of the 44th Artillery Brigade at a railway station in Kiev, Ukraine, after his return from the front line in the Eastern regions of Ukraine, September 6, 2015. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

GENEVA (Reuters) - At least 7,962 people have been killed and 17,811 wounded in violence in eastern Ukraine since mid-April 2014, the U.N. Human Rights Office said on Tuesday, as it published a regular report by U.N. monitors in the country. "This is a conservative estimate and the actual numbers could be considerably higher," it said. (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Andrew Heavens)