LAST UPDATE | 8 Jul 2024

RUSSIA’S MISSILE ATTACK on a children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine has killed 33 people and ripped open the healthcare centre in an attack condemned as a ruthless assault on civilians. 

Dozens of volunteers including hospital staff and rescue workers dug through debris from the Okhmatdyt paediatric hospital in a desperate search for survivors after the rare day-time bombardment of missiles, AFP journalists on the scene saw.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia launched dozens of missiles toward five towns and cities in southern and eastern Ukraine as well as the capital.

The attack has been condemned by Taoiseach Simon Harris, who labelled the assault as a “war crime”.

“Russia’s attacks across Ukraine and on a children’s hospital was a despicable and cowardly act. There can be no justification and no equivocation from the international community,” Harris said.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war on Ukraine is openly targeting civilian infrastructure and innocent children. It is repugnant, it is a war crime,” he added.

Ukrainian officials said 33 people have been killed and another 136 are wounded after the wave of 38 missiles ended. Three more were killed by Russian fire in Pokrovsk, close to the front line, in eastern Ukraine.

The air force said air defence systems had downed 30 projectiles.

Zelensky called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council over the barrage and urged Ukraine’s allies to deliver “a stronger response” to Russia’s attack.

Rescue efforts at the site of Okhmatdyt children's hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Condemnation

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Russian strikes “particularly shocking,” his spokesman said, while the EU’s chief foreign diplomat Josep Borrell slammed Russia for “ruthlessly” targeting civilians.

France condemned the attacks, with the foreign ministry calling the bombardment of a children’s hospital in Kyiv “barbaric”.

Kyiv said the children’s hospital had been struck by a Russian cruise missile and claimed that it contained components produced in NATO member countries.

Russia has claimed the extensive missile damage in Kyiv was in fact caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile. Moscow said its forces had struck their “intended targets”.

The Kremlin added it’s targets were only defence industry and military installations.

Natalia Svidler, 40, was in the hospital at the time of the strike with her two-year-old son, who was due to have surgery this week, when the air raid sirens sounded.

“The nurses told us to go down to the basement. After a while we heard a loud rumble and then the ceiling in the basement collapsed a little,” she said at the scene.

“Everyone got very scared, of course. Everyone started screaming and running,” she told AFP.

Officials in Kyiv said the attack had also damaged several residential buildings and an office block in Kyiv where reporters saw cars on fire and shredded trees in charred courtyards.

Rescuers work at a site of a destroyed building after Russia's missiles attack in Kyiv. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Energy sites ‘destroyed, damaged’

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said three electrical substations had been destroyed or damaged in Kyiv in the attack – the latest in series of strikes that have halved the country’s energy generation capacity in recent months, compared to one year ago.

Zelenskyy said that there was an unknown number of people trapped under the rubble of the children’s hospital.

Emergency officials said 20 people had been killed in the barrage that hit Kyiv and another 38 were wounded.

Russian forces have repeatedly targeted the capital with massive barrages since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the last major attack on Kyiv with drones and missiles was last month.

Must respond ‘with force’

In Zelenskyy’s hometown Kryvyi Rig, which has been repeatedly targeted by Russian bombardment, the strikes killed at least 10 and wounded over 41, officials there said.

In Dnipro, a city of around one million people in the same region, one person was killed and six more were wounded, the region’s governor said, when a high rise residential building and petrol station were hit.

And in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces have taken a string of villages in recent weeks, the regional governor said three people were killed in Pokrovsk – a town that had a pre-war population of around 60,000 people.

“This shelling targeted civilians, hit infrastructure, and the whole world should see today the consequences of terror, which can only be responded to by force,” the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, wrote on social media.

Zelenskyy and other officials in Kyiv have been urging Ukraine’s allies to send more air defence systems, including Patriot missiles, to the war-battered country to help fend off deadly Russian aerial bombardments.

“Russia cannot claim ignorance of where its missiles are flying and must be held fully accountable for all its crimes,” Zelenskyy said in another post on social media.

- © AFP 2024