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Rescuers picked through the rubble of a children’s hospital in Kyiv after it was hit by one of dozens of Russian missiles in the heaviest and deadliest wave of airstrikes on the city in almost four months.
At least 41 civilians, including three children, were killed in the strike, Ukrainian officials said as the death toll surged in the early hours of Tuesday.
Parents fled with babies and sick youngsters after a daylight aerial attack on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital that Ukrainian officials described as “genocide”.
“It was scary. I couldn’t breathe, I was trying to cover [my baby],” said Svitlana Kravchenko, 33. “I was trying to cover him with this cloth so that he could breathe.”
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will meet on Tuesday to discuss the horror, which came on the eve of a three-day Nato summit in Washington that will look at how to reassure Ukrainians that their country can come through Europe’s biggest conflict since the Second World War.
Kyiv declared a day of mourning on Tuesday in the wake of one of the worst air attacks in the Russian invasion and the deadliest in four months.
Vladimir Putin’s forces launched the hypersonic missile barrage at five Ukrainian cities, hitting seven of the capital’s 10 districts along with Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro and Pokrovsk. Ukraine’s Air Force said it had intercepted 30 missiles out of a total 38 fired. On Monday evening, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky said at least 37 civilians were killed and more than 170 wounded.
The missiles tore through parts of Ukraine and damaged nearly 100 buildings. “In total, nearly 100 facilities were damaged, including a children’s hospital, ordinary houses, kindergartens, a maternity hospital, a college, and a business center. The rubble is still being cleared at these sites,” Mr Zelensky said.
“The Russian terrorists must answer for this,” he wrote. “Being concerned does not stop terror. Condolences are not a weapon.”
At the hospital, a search was underway for victims under the rubble of a partially collapsed, two-storey wing of the facility. In the main 10-storey building, windows and doors were blown out and walls were blackened. Blood was splattered on the floor in one room. The intensive care unit, operating theatres and oncology departments all sustained damage.
At the time of the strike, three heart operations were being performed, and debris from the explosion entered patients’ open chests. The hospital lost water, light and oxygen in the attack, and the patients were transferred to other facilities.
Rescuers formed a line, passing bricks and other debris to each other as they sifted through rubble. Smoke rose from the building, and volunteers and emergency crews worked in protective masks. Some mothers carried children away on their backs.
A few hours after the initial strike, another air raid siren sent many of them hurrying to the hospital’s shelter. Led by a torch through the shelter’s dark corridors, mothers carried their bandaged children in their arms, and medical workers pushed other patients on trolleys. Volunteers handed out sweets to try to calm the children.
Marina Ploskonos said her four-year-old son had spinal surgery last week. “My child is terrified,” she cried. “This shouldn’t be happening, it’s a children’s hospital.”
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Mr Zelensky, said the attack was carried out by “Russian terrorists”.
“It is a terror that the world must see and respond to,” he said. “This is genocide.”
Daria Herasymchuk, an adviser to Mr Zelensky, told The Independent: “Today they have destroyed many families. Mothers and fathers will not return to their children in the evening, and children will not finish their books of life.”
“Have you ever heard a child screaming under the rubble? I have never heard anything more terrible! How long can the world just talk? Every country must act now.”
Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, urged allies to provide more air defence technology.
The missiles launched by Russian forces on Monday were flying at extremely low altitudes, said Ukrainian Air Force representative Colonel Yuri Ignat. This was a fresh tactic deployed by Russian forces, making it more difficult to repel Russian attacks as Moscow’s forces kept enhancing their bombardment tactics, he said.
“Enemy missiles are equipped with additional means, including radar and thermal traps,” Ignat wrote on Facebook.
The Kremlin said Kyiv’s claim that Russia had targeted the hospital was “absolutely untrue”. It said the destruction was caused by Ukrainian air defence missiles.
Ukraine’s security service said it had found wreckage from a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile at the site, and opened proceedings on war crime charges. The Kh-101 is an air-launched missile that flies low to avoid detection by radar.
Hospitals and other medical facilities are protected from military strikes under international law unless they are being used for military operations.
The International Criminal Court’s founding charter says it is a war crime to intentionally attack buildings “dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives”.
The UNSC meeting was requested by Britain, France, Ecuador, Slovenia and the United States.
“We will call out Russia’s cowardly and depraved attack on the hospital,” said Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward.
In Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, at least three bodies were pulled from a partially destroyed residential building as emergency crews searched for survivors.
The powerful blast wave scorched nearby buildings, shattered windows and flung a dog into a nearby yard, resident Halina Sichievka said.
“Now we don’t have anything in our apartment, no windows, no doors, nothing. Nothing at all,” the 28-year-old said.
Ukraine’s military said the bombardment included Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, which are among the most advanced Russian weapons. They fly at 10 times the speed of sound, making them hard to intercept.
AP and Reuters contributed to this report
