At least three people were killed, including a young girl, in an attack on a children’s hospital in Mariupol in southern Ukraine, local officials said on Thursday.
The city council on its Telegram channel said;
Three people were killed, including a female child, in yesterday’s attack on a children’s and maternity hospital in Ukraine’s besieged Mariupol, according to updated figures this morning.
Officials had previously given a toll of 17 injured in the attack.
“The Russian forces are destroying Mariupol’s civilian population deliberately and without mercy,” the city council added.
It says 1,200 inhabitants have been killed in nine days of Russian siege.
The attack on the children’s hospital, described by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “war crime“, has triggered international indignation.
Speaking, Save the Children’s Eastern Europe Director, Irina Saghoyan, in a statement on Thursday stated;
It’s horrifying that a place people seek for help has become one of absolute and utter destruction. Where can families and children turn to if even hospitals are not safe? They must not become the battlefields where conflicts rage and innocent children are the casualties.
However, Russia said claims it bombed the hospital were “fake news” because the building was a former maternity hospital that had long been taken over by troops.
“That’s how fake news is born,” Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Twitter.
He said Russia had warned on 7 March that the hospital had been turned into a military object from which Ukrainians were firing.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has entered its third week with none of its key objectives reached despite thousands of people killed, more than two million made refugees, and thousands forced to hide in besieged cities under relentless bombardment.
Ukrainian forces including citizen-soldiers who only last month never dreamed of firing a weapon in anger were holding out in Kyiv and other frontlines, while Russian troops, tanks and artillery made slow progress from the north, south and east.
Moscow’s stated objectives of crushing the Ukrainian military and ousting the pro-West elected government of President remained out of reach.
Western-led sanctions designed to cut the Russian economy and government from international financial markets were beginning to bite, with the Russian share market and rouble plunging and ordinary Russians rushing to hoard cash.
Mr Zelensky accused Russia of carrying out genocide after the attack on the children’s hospital.
“What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, is afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?” Mr Zelensky expressed in a televised address last night.
He repeated his call for the West to tighten sanctions on Russia “so that they sit down at the negotiating table and end this brutal war“.
The bombing of the children’s hospital, he said, was “proof that a genocide of Ukrainians is taking place“.
Meanwhile, United States condemned the hospital bombing as a “barbaric use of military force to go after innocent civilians“.
However, Kremlin (Russian government) spokesman Dmitry Peskov insists: “Russian forces do not fire on civilian targets.”
Russia calls its invasion a “special operation” to disarm its neighbour and dislodge leaders it calls “neo-Nazis.”
Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted video footage of what it said was the hospital showing holes where windows should have been in a three-storey building. Huge piles of smouldering rubble littered the scene.
UN Human Rights body said it was verifying the number of casualties at Mariupol.
The incident “adds to our deep concerns about indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas,” it added through a spokesperson.
Among more than two million total refugees from Ukraine, UNICEF said yesterday that more than one million children have fled the country since the invasion started on 24 February. At least 37 had been killed and 50 injured, it said.
Additionally, International Committee of the Red Cross said houses had been destroyed all across Ukraine. “Hundreds of thousands of people have no food, no water, no heat, no electricity and no medical care,” it said.
Foreign ministers from Russia and Ukraine are meeting in Turkey this morning in the first high-level talks between the two countries since the invasion began, with hope they could mark a turning point in the conflict.
“I will say frankly that my expectations of the talks are low,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a video statement yesterday.
Ukraine is seeking a ceasefire, liberation of its territories and to resolve all humanitarian issues, Mr Kuleba said.
Moscow demands that Kyiv take a neutral position and drop aspirations of joining the NATO alliance.
Mr Zelensky told VICE in an interview yesterday that he was confident Russian leader Vladimir Putin would at some stage agree to talks. “I think he will. I think he sees that we are strong. He will. We need some time,” he said.
Meanwhile, Britain’s Ministry of Defence noted that the large Russian column northwest of Kyiv has made little progress in over a week and is suffering continued losses.
As casualties mount, President Putin will be forced to draw from across Russian armed forces and other sources to replace the losses, the MoD said in a statement.
There has also been a notable decrease in overall Russian air activity over Ukraine in recent days, it said.
Russia has been hit by Western sanctions and the withdrawals of foreign firms, the latest including Nestle, cigarette maker Philip Morris and Sony.
Rio Tinto today became the first major mining company to announce it was cutting all ties with Russian businesses.
US House of Representatives voted to rush $13.6bn in aid to Ukraine, sending the legislation to the Senate.
A majority of the US House of Representatives also voted to impose a ban on imports of Russian oil and other energy products in retaliation for Moscow’s ongoing attack on Ukraine.
Via RTE.
