Ukraine has accused Russia of carrying out an airstrike on a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol.
Russia continued to bomb and shell Ukrainian cities and tens of thousands of civilians left besieged areas under ceasefire agreements during the day, fewer than hoped as several evacuation efforts again failed.
The city council said that an airstrike on a hospital in the port city of Mariupol has killed three people, including a six-year-old child, as Russian forces intensified their siege of Ukrainian cities.
The ground shook more than a mile away when the Mariupol complex was hit by a series of blasts that blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building.
The attack in the southern port city wounded women waiting to give birth and has buried doctors and children in the rubble. Bombs also fell on two hospitals in another city west of the capital.
Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victims, carrying out a heavily pregnant and bleeding woman on a stretcher. Another woman wailed as she clutched her child. In the courtyard, a blast crater extended at least two stories deep.
President Zelensky said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under debris, he said: “A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation? What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?”
He labeled the Mariupol attack “an atrocity” and again urged the West to impose a no-fly zone, saying: “How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror?”
As Russian military chiefs admitted using “body-vaporizing” thermobaric rockets, he warned “we will lose millions of people” if Putin’s invasion continued much longer.
Volodymir Nikulin, a top regional police official said while standing in the ruins: “Today Russia committed a huge crime. It is a war crime without any justification.”
In a statement, the Mariupol city government said on Telegram: “Today it is known that after the terrorist bombing of a children’s hospital in Mariupol by Russian planes, 17 people were injured (children, women, doctors), three died, including one child – a girl.”
“Russian troops are purposefully and ruthlessly destroying the civilian population of Mariupol. The whole world should know about Russia’s crime against humanity, against Ukraine, and against the people of Mariupol!” they added.
Pavlo Kyrylenko. regional governor said that Wednesday’s airstrike was carried out during an agreed ceasefire period that was meant to allow the evacuation of civilians from the besieged southern city.
He said on a Facebook post: “So far there are 17 wounded personnel of the hospital” adding that “so far no kids were wounded” and there have been “no deaths”.
It’s been reported that women in labor were among the 17 injured. Many pregnant women who were at the hospital were hiding in the basement when the strike occurred, according to reports.
Mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said on Facebook that in Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 to the west of Kyiv, bombs fell on two hospitals, one of them a children’s hospital, and fortunately, no one was wounded.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago. They had also confirmed 10 deaths in attacks on health facilities and ambulances since the fighting began. It was not clear if its numbers included the assault on the maternity hospital.
Meanwhile, Turkey was hosting the highest-level talks so far between the two sides on Wednesday. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped the meeting between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba “will open the door to a permanent cease-fire”.
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