Rescue mission in Kyiv
RESCUE operations have stretched into a second day at a Kyiv children’s hospital which was struck by a Russian missile, as Ukrainian officials raised the countrywide death toll to 42 after the intense daytime attack on multiple cities.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said on the social platform X that 64 people were taken to hospital in the capital as well as 28 in Kryvyi Rih and six in Dnipro – both in central Ukraine.
It was Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in almost four months and one of the deadliest of the war, hitting seven of the city’s 10 districts.
The strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, which interrupted open-heart surgery and forced young cancer patients to have their treatments outdoors, drew an international outcry.
The 10-storey hospital, which is Ukraine’s largest medical facility for children, was caring for 670 patients at the time of the attack, Okhmatdyt’s director general Volodymyr Zhovnir said on Tuesday. The missile hit a two-storey wing of the hospital.
“The building where we conducted dialysis for children with kidney failure or acute intoxication is ruined entirely,” he told reporters, estimating the overall damage to the hospital at 2.5 million dollars.
Danielle Bell, the head of a UN team tracking human rights violations in Ukraine, said at least two people were killed at the hospital and some 50 people were injured, including seven children.
The casualty figure would have been much higher if patients had not been taken to a bunker when air raid sirens first sounded, she added. Authorities are working to restore the hospital’s power and water supply.
It was Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in almost four months and one of the deadliest of the war, hitting seven of the city’s 10 districts.
Kyiv city administrators declared Tuesday an official day of mourning. Entertainment events were prohibited and flags lowered in the capital.
Russia denied responsibility for the hospital strike, insisting it does not attack civilian targets in Ukraine despite abundant evidence to the contrary.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday repeated that position, citing a Russian Defence Ministry statement that blamed a Ukrainian air defence missile for partially destroying the hospital.