At least 43 people have been killed and around 190 injured as Russia fired more than 40 missiles across Ukraine in what is one of the deadliest attacks
In the capital of Kyiv, a children’s hospital where many patients were being treated for cancer, as well as a maternity ward nearby, were both hit by missiles. It was Russia’s heaviest bombardment of the city in almost four months, hitting seven of the city’s 10 districts. At least 29 people were killed in the capital, including two staff members at Okhmatdyt children’s hospital.
Footage showed hundreds of emergency workers gathered at the hospital as they desperately tried to recover those buried under the rubble.
“This is what Russian terrorism looks like,” said Olena Shuliak, the head of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s political party Servant of the people. “Beings without honor and conscience attacked the hospital and other civilian objects in broad daylight.
“We are dealing with concentrated evil that will never be forgiven. The world must unite to stop the country of killers once and for all.”
Further south, missiles struck Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens more.
The head of the military administration in the area, Yevhen Sytnychenko, said search and rescue operations in the area were being hampered by air raid alerts and reports of more missiles being fired at the city throughout the day.
And 90 miles eastward, also in the Dnipropetrovsk region, another person was killed and six more injured in a second attack.
Further eastward still, another three people were killed in Pokrovsk, in the Donetsk region, according to local governor Vadym Filashkin, while there were further attacks in the nearby cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
Since early in the war that is well into its third year, Russian officials have regularly claimed that Moscow’s forces never attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.
More than 1,600 medical facilities have been damaged since the start of the war and 214 have been ruined completely, according to Ukrainian Health Ministry statistics published last month.
Colonel Yurii Ignat of the Ukrainian air force said Russia has been improving the effectiveness of its airstrikes, equipping its missiles with enhancements, including so-called heat traps that evade air-defense systems.
In Monday’s attack, the cruise missiles flew as low as 50 meters (160 feet) off the ground, making them harder to hit, he said in comments sent to AP.
