Russian missiles kill 20 people in children’s hospital Gut in Ukraine

Russia fired dozens of missiles at cities across Ukraine on Monday. The attack killed at least 20 people and hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv, officials said.

The rare Russian shelling occurred during the day when President Volodymyr Zelensky was scheduled to arrive in Warsaw before flying to Washington for the NATO summit, according to the Polish government.

AFP journalists reported that there were explosions and black smoke rising from downtown Kyiv.

Images released by officials at Kyiv’s children’s hospital show people digging through piles of rubble, black smoke rising from a burnt-out building and medical staff in blood-stained gowns.

“Russian terrorists have once again launched massive missile attacks on Ukraine. In various cities: Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk,” said Zelensky, naming important civilian centers in the south and east of the country.

“More than 40 rockets of various types. Residential buildings, infrastructure and a children’s hospital were damaged,” he wrote on social media.

Zelensky said an unknown number of people were trapped under the rubble of the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital and it was not immediately clear how many people had been killed.

City officials had previously said at least seven people had been killed in the barrage in Kyiv.

Since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces have repeatedly bombarded the capital with massive barrages, with the last major attack on Kyiv using drones and missiles coming last month.

In Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, which has been repeatedly targeted by Russian bombings, at least ten people were killed and more than 30 injured in the attacks, the mayor said.

“In Dnipro, a high-rise building and an enterprise were damaged. A gas station was damaged. There are injured,” added Dnipropetrovsk Governor Sergiy Lysak.

In the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces have captured a number of villages in recent weeks, three people were killed in Pokrovsk, a town that had a population of around 60,000 before the war, according to the regional governor.

There was no initial comment from the Kremlin on the attacks, but it stressed that its forces do not attack civilian infrastructure.

“This shelling targeted civilians, hit infrastructure, and the whole world should see today the consequences of terror, which can only be responded to with violence,” the head of the presidential administration in Kyiv, Andriy Yermak, wrote on social media after the attack.

Zelensky and other politicians in Kyiv urged Ukraine’s allies to send more air defense systems, including Patriot systems, to the war-torn country to help fend off deadly Russian air strikes.

“Russia cannot claim not to know where its missiles are flying and must be held fully accountable for all its crimes,” Zelensky said in another social media post.