Ukraine: Ukraine says at least 31 people killed, children’s hospital hit in major Russian missile attack
Russia launched dozens of missiles at cities across Ukraine on Monday in an attack that killed at least 31 people and smashed into a children’s hospital in Kyiv, officials said. The rare day-time Russian barrage came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due in Warsaw, the Polish government said, before he flies to a NATO summit in Washington.
Explosions rang out and black smoke could be seen rising from the centre of Kyiv, AFP journalists reported.
Pictures distributed by officials from the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv showed people digging through mounds of rubble, black smoke billowing over a gutted building and medical staff wearing blood-stained scrubs. Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said two people died at the hospital as a result of the strike, including a 30-year-old doctor, and another 16 were wounded, seven of them children.
Klitschko said people’s voices were heard from underneath the rubble as rescuers continued digging through the debris.