Against least 24 people were killed when Russia launched dozens of missiles against Ukrainian cities on Monday. The missiles also crashed into a children’s hospital in Kyiv, trapping victims beneath the debris, according to officials.
Following the unusual daytime bombing, dozens of volunteers, medical professionals, and rescue personnel were frantically searching for survivors among the rubble of a section of the Okhmatdyt pediatric hospital.
Hours after the initial strikes, first responders fled for safety as sirens and a boom went off as Ukraine fights to defend itself against Russian aircraft attacks.
Russian forces, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, fired more than 40 missiles at least five significant civilian centers, mostly in the east and south of the nation as well as Kiev.
Zelensky was slated to ask for increased military support from the nation’s allies at the NATO summit in Washington, where he was scheduled to visit Warsaw prior to the attack.
As the missiles struck the capital and fragments from dropped munitions fell all across the city, AFP correspondents on the ground heard air raid sirens and explosions.
The ceiling ‘broke’.
When the air raid sirens went off, forty-year-old Natalia Svidler and her two-year-old son were at the hospital. Her kid was scheduled for surgery this week.
“We were instructed to head to the basement by the nurses. We heard a huge rumbling after a while, and then the basement ceiling gave way a little,” she stated at the scene.
Naturally, everyone became quite afraid. Everyone began to run and scream,” she said to AFP.
In addition, other residential buildings and an office tower in Kyiv were damaged in the attack, according to city officials. AFP reporters witnessed cars burning and trees being torn up in scorched courtyards.
Three electrical substations had also been damaged or destroyed in the attack, according to Ukrainian energy operator DTEK. This was the most recent in a string of attacks that had reduced the nation’s capacity to generate energy by half in recent months.
It was not immediately evident how many people had died, according to Zelensky, who stated that there were an unknown number of individuals trapped beneath the debris of the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital.
One body was at the site, covered in an emergency blanket, according to an AFP reporter. According to municipal officials, at least ten persons were killed in the shelling that struck Kyiv, and five people had been rescued from the debris.
Since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces have frequently assaulted the capital with heavy barrages; the most recent significant strike on Kyiv with drones and missiles occurred last month.
Need to react “with force”
At least 10 people were killed and over 41 injured in the strikes in Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rig, which has been routinely targeted by Russian artillery, according to local officials.
One person was killed and six more were injured in Dnipro, a city of about a million people in the same region, when a high-rise residential structure and gas station were struck, according to the governor of the area.
The regional governor of the eastern Donetsk area, where Russian soldiers have seized many villages in recent weeks, reported that three people had died in Pokrovsk, a town with 60,000 residents before to the conflict.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond on the strikes, but it maintains that its military do not attack civilian facilities.
Following the attack, Andriy Yermak, the head of Kyiv’s presidential administration, posted on social media, saying, “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.”
Zelensky and other Kyiv officials have been pleading with Ukraine’s allies to dispatch additional Patriot air defense systems to the war-torn nation in order to assist prevent lethal Russian aerial bombing.
In another social media post, Zelensky stated, “Russia cannot claim ignorance of where its missiles are flying and must be held fully accountable for all its crimes.”
