Russian attack damages children’s hospital in Kyiv

Rescue workers and volunteers clear debris and search for victims after a Russian missile struck the country’s largest children’s hospital, Ochmadit, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, July 8, 2024.

By Hanna Arhirova and Illia Novikov | Associated Press

KIEV, Ukraine — Russian missiles struck cities across Ukraine on Monday, damaging the country’s largest children’s hospital and other buildings. Heart surgeries had to be halted and young cancer patients had to undergo treatments outdoors. At least 31 people were killed, officials said.

The daytime shelling targeted five Ukrainian cities with more than 40 rockets of different types, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media. The Ukrainian Air Force said it intercepted 30 rockets. More than 150 people were injured.

It was the heaviest Russian bombing raid on Kiev in nearly four months. It hit seven of the city’s ten districts. At least seven people were killed in the capital, including two hospital workers. Ten people were killed in attacks in Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s birthplace in central Ukraine.

During the attack on the children’s hospital in Okhmatdyt, debris fell into the opened chests of heart patients in the middle of an operation. The beds of cancer patients were rolled into parks and onto the streets.

“It is very important that the world does not remain silent about this now and that everyone sees what Russia is and what it is doing,” Zelensky said.

Russia denied the attack on the hospital and said the strikes hit military targets.

The attack came a day before the scheduled start of a three-day NATO summit in Washington, where Western leaders backing Ukraine were to discuss how to reassure Kyiv of the alliance’s full support and give Ukrainians hope that their country can emerge from Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.

During a visit to Poland, Zelensky said he hoped the summit would lead to the provision of additional air defense systems to Ukraine.

In a statement, US President Joe Biden called Monday’s missile attacks “a terrible reminder of Russia’s brutality.”

“It is vital that the world continues to stand with Ukraine at this important moment and that we do not ignore Russian aggression,” the statement said.

At the Kyiv hospital, rescue workers searched for victims under the rubble of a partially collapsed two-story wing of the facility. In the 10-story main building, windows and doors were blown out and walls blackened. In one room, the floor was splattered with blood. The intensive care unit, operating rooms and oncology departments were all damaged, officials said.

At the time of the attack, three heart surgeries were being performed, which resulted in the patients’ open chests being contaminated with debris from the explosion, said Health Minister Viktor Liashko.

Water, light and oxygen had failed in the hospital and patients had been transferred to other hospitals, he said on Ukrainian television.

Rescue workers formed a line and passed bricks and other debris to each other as they searched through the rubble. Smoke rose from the building and volunteers and rescue workers worked wearing protective masks.

Some mothers carried their children away on their backs, others waited with their children in the yard while the doctors’ calls went unanswered.

A few hours after the first attack, another air raid siren sounded and many of them rushed to the hospital’s shelter. By the light of a flashlight, mothers walked through the shelter’s dark corridors, carrying their bandaged children, and medical staff carried other patients on stretchers. Volunteers handed out sweets to calm the children.

Marina Ploskonos said her four-year-old son underwent spinal surgery on Friday.

“My child is terrified,” she said. “This shouldn’t be happening, we are in a children’s hospital,” she said, bursting into tears.

“Among the victims were the most seriously ill children in Ukraine,” said Volker Türk, the UN human rights commissioner. A UN team visited the hospital shortly after the attack and saw the children receiving cancer treatment in hospital beds set up outside, he added.

“This is abhorrent and I implore all influential people to do everything in their power to ensure that these attacks stop immediately,” Türk said.

The Kyiv city administration declared July 9 a day of mourning, with entertainment events banned and flags flown at half-mast.

Ukraine’s security service said it had found debris from a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile at the site and opened a war crimes case. The Kh-101 is an air-launched missile that flies low to avoid detection by radar. Ukraine said it shot down 11 of 13 Kh-101 missiles fired on Monday.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described Monday’s rocket attacks as “particularly shocking,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

At the request of France and Ecuador, the UN Security Council has called an emergency meeting on the attacks for Tuesday. Russia, which holds the rotating presidency of the council this month, will chair the meeting.

The founding charter of the International Criminal Court states that the deliberate attack on “hospitals and assembly points for the sick and wounded” is a war crime, unless the targets are military.

Late last month, the court issued arrest warrants for the former Russian defense minister and the chief of the general staff for an attack on the Ukrainian power grid.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the attacks targeted Ukrainian military facilities and airbases and were successful. It denied that civilian facilities were targeted and claimed without evidence that images from Kyiv suggested the damage was caused by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile.

Since the beginning of the war, now in its third year, Russian officials have regularly claimed that Moscow’s forces would never attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, despite ample evidence to the contrary, including reports by the Associated Press.

Since the war began, more than 1,600 medical facilities have been damaged and 214 have been completely destroyed, according to statistics released last month by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.

Colonel Yuri Ignat of the Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had improved the effectiveness of its air strikes and equipped its missiles with special systems, including so-called heat traps that evade air defense systems.

In Monday’s attack, the cruise missiles flew only 50 meters above the ground and were therefore harder to hit, he said in a comment sent to AP.

About three hours after the first attacks, more rockets hit Kiev and partially destroyed a private medical center. Four people were killed there, the Ukrainian emergency management service said.