Ukraine accuses Russia of bombing children’s hospital in Mariupol | Russia-Ukraine war News
Ukraine’s president says children and other people are buried under rubble after the Russian air strike ‘atrocity’.
Ukraine accused Russia of bombing a children’s hospital and maternity ward in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, trapping children and others under the rubble in what Ukraine’s president called an “atrocity”.
Russia had said it would hold fire to let thousands of civilians flee Mariupol and other besieged cities on Wednesday, but Mariupol’s city council said the hospital had been hit several times by an air strike.
“The destruction is colossal,” it said in an online post.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared footage on Twitter from the scene of the alleged attack, which appeared to show several wrecked rooms along a corridor in a building that had blown-out windows. Outside of the building, a square carpeted with rubble and debris could be seen.
“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,” Zelenskyy said.
Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the footage.
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
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 9, 2022
The Donetsk region’s governor said 17 people were wounded in the attack, including women in labour. The reports could not immediately be verified.
A video provided by the Mariupol city council appeared to show heavy damage to a three-storey building, with mangled cars burning outside. Much of the front of the building had been ripped away.
“There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenceless,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote on Twitter, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be held “to account for his terrible crimes”.
Authorities had announced new ceasefires on Wednesday morning to allow thousands of civilians to escape from towns around Kyiv as well as in Mariupol, Enerhodar and Volnovakha, Izyum in the east and Sumy in the northeast.
Previous attempts to establish safe evacuation corridors largely failed because of what the Ukrainians said were Russian attacks. But Putin, in a telephone call with Germany’s chancellor, accused Ukrainian nationalists of hampering the evacuations.
About 200,000 people in Mariupol are waiting to flee violence as the humanitarian situation is reportedly growing more desperate by the day.
The port city has been without water, heat, functioning sanitation systems or phone connections for the past week, with bodies lying uncollected on the streets and residents relying on streams or melting snow for drinking water. Continued shelling has also prevented repairs to damaged heating and water infrastructure.
Earlier on Wednesday Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia had broken the ceasefire around the southern port, which lies between Russian-backed separatist areas of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, annexed by Moscow from Ukraine in 2014.
“Russia continues holding hostage over 400,000 people in Mariupol, blocks humanitarian aid and evacuation. Indiscriminate shelling continues,” he wrote on Twitter. “Almost 3,000 newborn babies lack medicine and food.”
Ukraine said at least 1,170 civilians had been killed in Mariupol since the start of the invasion, and 47 were buried in a mass grave on Wednesday. It was not possible to verify the figures.
The United Nations human rights office in Geneva, just prior to the reports of the hospital attack, said it had verified 516 civilian deaths and 908 people wounded since the conflict began.
Taking Mariupol would allow Russia to link forces pushing north from Crimea with its forces from the east.
