A Russian missile struck a children’s hospital in Ukraine’s capital Monday, part of a barrage of aerial attacks on areas throughout the country that killed at least 31 people and injured another 154.

“Russian terrorists have once again launched a massive missile attack on Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. “Different cities — Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Slovyansk, Kramatorsk.”

Zelenskyy said Russia targeted the five cities with more than 40 missiles of different types in the daytime assault that hit apartment buildings and public infrastructure. Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted 30 missiles.

Authorities said seven people were killed in the Kyiv attack, while strikes in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy's birthplace in central Ukraine, killed 10 people and injured 47.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the attacks, calling the strikes on the Kyiv hospital and on another medical facility in the capital’s Dniprovsky district “particularly shocking,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“Directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects is prohibited by international humanitarian law, and any such attacks are unacceptable and must end immediately,” Dujarric said.

The United Nations Security Council will meet on Tuesday to discuss the Russian attack, diplomats said.

Russia's defense ministry said the strikes targeted Ukrainian defense plants and military air bases and were successful. It denied aiming at any civilian facilities and claimed without evidence that pictures from Kyiv indicated the damage was caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile.

Col. Yurii Ignat of the Ukrainian air force said Russia has been improving the effectiveness of its airstrikes, equipping its missiles with enhancements, including so-called heat traps that deflect air defense systems.

In Monday's attack, the cruise missiles flew at low altitudes — only up to 50 meters off the ground — making them harder to hit, he said in comments sent to The Associated Press.

Western countries, led by the United States, have backed Ukraine with billions of dollars of armaments. They are holding a three-day NATO summit in Washington starting Tuesday to look at how they can reassure Kyiv of the alliance's unwavering support and offer Ukrainians hope that their country can come through Europe's biggest conflict since World War II.

The Ukrainian leader said rescuers were digging through rubble at Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Kyiv where the number of casualties was not yet known. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 16 people, seven of them children, were injured in the attack, which caused a partial collapse of a two-story wing of the facility.

On the hospital's main 10-story building, windows and doors were blown out and walls blackened. Blood was splattered on the floor in one room. The intensive care unit, operating theaters and oncology departments all were damaged, officials said.

The attack forced the evacuation of the hospital and its temporary closure. Some mothers carried their children away on their backs, while others waited in the courtyard with their children as calls to doctors' phones rang unanswered.

In the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, authorities said missiles hit an industrial factory, killing at least three people.

The Russian attack overnight included a fourth Kh-101 missile, as well as two Iskander-M ballistic missiles, the Ukrainian air force said. (Source: VOA News)

Story Date: July 10, 2024