An airstrike on a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol wounded women waiting to give birth and buried children in the rubble as Russian forces intensified their siege of Ukrainian cities. Bombs also fell on two hospitals in another city west of the capital.
The World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago.
Turkey, meanwhile, was hosting the highest-level talks so far between the two sides on Thursday. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped the meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba “will open the door to a permanent cease-fire.” But Kuleba said he did not have high expectations.
Ahead of those talks, artillery fire was heard on the western edge of Kyiv, Deputy Interior Minister Vadym Denysenko said. He told Ukrainian TV channel Rada that residents had a “rather difficult” night on the outskirts of the capital in which Russian forces started by targeting military sites but then hit residential areas.
Ukrainian officials said the attack Wednesday at a medical complex in Mariupol, where a siege has forced residents to scavenge for food and water, wounded at least 17 people.
The ground shook more than a mile away when the series of blasts hit. Explosions blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victims, carrying a bleeding woman with a swollen belly on a stretcher past burning and mangled cars.
Another woman wailed as she clutched her child. In the courtyard, a blast crater extended at least two stories deep.
“Today Russia committed a huge crime,” said Volodymir Nikulin, a top regional police official, standing in the ruins. “It is a war crime without any justification.”
In Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 to the west of Kyiv, bombs fell on two hospitals, one of them a children’s hospital, Mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said on Facebook. He said there were no injuries.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under debris.
“A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, switching to Russian to express horror at the strike. “What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?”
He urged the West to impose even tougher sanctions than the ones that have already plunged its economy into severe isolation, so Russia “no longer has any possibility to continue this genocide.”
Video shared by Zelenskyy showed cheerfully painted hallways strewn with twisted metal.
“There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenseless,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be held “to account for his terrible crimes.”
The WHO said it had confirmed 10 people died and 16 were injured in attacks on health facilities and ambulances since the fighting began. It was not clear if its numbers included the assault on the maternity hospital.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken condemned Russia’s “unconscionable attacks” in a call with his Kuleba, the State Department said.
AP
