A pediatric and maternity hospital was badly damaged on Wednesday in a Russian airstrike on Ukrainian port surrounded city of Mariupol, injuring at least 17, local official said Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video on Twitter showing mass destruction in the grand medical complex, including blown-out windows and interior walls torn out of what he believed was caused by a “direct strike by Russian troops”.
He said adults and children were “under the wreckage”.
“So far there are 17 injured personnel of the hospital,” Kyrylenko, the head of the southeastern Donetsk region said later in a video posted on Facebook. He added that “so far no children have been harmed” and that there have been no fatalities.
Kyrylenko said the attack “literally destroyed” maternity in the center of the city this also included a pediatric unit.
He said a Russian pilot obviously knew where the bomb would land.
Mariupol on the sea of azov in southeastern Ukraine is surrounded by Russian forces, who bombed the city despite the promises of a ceasefirefire for allow civilians to evacuate.
Videos posted by Kyrylenko and the city authorities showed evacuation of the hospital including a woman on a stretcher and a woman supported by two men as she walks out.
They show a huge crater in the yard of the hospital, broken branches from trees and burning cars, while the siding was torn off building’s facade.
Zelensky condemned the attack as an “atrocity” and called again for a no-fly zone to be imposed over the country. NATO refused to do so.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also condemned the attacker saying: “There is little more depraved than to target the vulnerable and helpless. »
No health facility”should never be a target,” United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday after the apparent Russian airstrike.
The UN and the World Health Organization have called for an “immediate halt to attacks on healthcare, hospitals, healthcare workers, ambulances,” Dujarric said during his daily press conference.
Earlier in the week, the majority of the patients in most grand of Ukraine childrenfrom the hospital were evacuated.
