Air strike wounds 17 staff at Ukraine children's hospital
KYIV, Ukraine — A Russian air strike on Wednesday hit a paediatric and maternity hospital in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, injuring at least 17 staff, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video on Twitter showing massive destruction at the large medical complex, including blown-out windows and internal walls ripped out, which he said was caused by a "direct strike by Russian troops".
He said that adults and children were "under the wreckage".
Mariupol. Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity. pic.twitter.com/FoaNdbKH5k
— ????????? ?????????? (@ZelenskyyUa) March 9, 2022
"So far there are 17 wounded personnel of the hospital," Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the southeastern Donetsk region, said in a video posted on Facebook.
"So far no kids were wounded" and there have been "no deaths", he added.
The attack came as women were in labour in the recently refurbished hospital, Donetsk regional military administration told AFP.
The attack came as the World Health Organization warned the war with Russia has sparked a health crisis in Ukraine, with at least 18 verified attacks on health care facilities, ambulances and personnel, resulting in 10 deaths and 16 injuries.
The attack "literally destroyed" the maternity hospital in the centre of the city, which also included a paediatric unit, Kyrylenko said.
Videos posted by the regional chief and the city authorities showed the evacuation of the hospital including one woman on a stretcher and another being supported by two men as she walks out.
They also showed a huge crater in the yard of the hospital, branches snapped from trees and burning cars, while cladding was ripped from the building's facade.
Kyrylenko commented that a Russian pilot evidently knew where the bomb would land.
Zelensky condemned the attack as an "atrocity" and called again for a no-fly zone to be imposed over the country. NATO has refused to do this.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also condemned the attack, saying: "There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenceless."
Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich told Ukrainian television "the strike on the maternity hospital in Mariupol was "just for starters", warning "a completely different war is about to start".
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova did not deny the attack in comments at a Moscow briefing.
She said Ukrainian "nationalist battalions" were using the maternity hospital to set up firing positions after moving out staff and patients.
Mariupol on the Azov Sea in southeastern Ukraine is surrounded by Russian forces, who have bombarded the city despite promises of a ceasefire to allow civilians to be evacuated.
Residents have been cut off from electricity, water and gas. Communications are disrupted and attempts to deliver food and medicine have failed.
Ukrainian ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova wrote on Telegram that Mariupol faces a humanitarian crisis.
"The Russian military has been shelling Mariupol with heavy artillery since early morning today," she said, adding that the planned evacuation route to Zaporizhzhia in the northwest had not been demined.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
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