A Russian air strike on Wednesday severely damaged a maternity hospital in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, burying patients under rubble and injuring women in labor.
The bombing, described as an “atrocity” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, occurred despite an agreed-upon ceasefire to allow thousands of civilians trapped in the city to flee.
According to the city council, an air strike hit the hospital several times, causing “colossal” damage.
“Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage,” Zelenskiy said on Twitter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked by Reuters for comment, said: “Russian forces do not fire on civilian targets.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry posted footage of what it said was the hospital showing blasted-out windows and piles of smouldering rubble.
The Donetsk region’s governor said 17 people were wounded, including women in labour. The United Nations human rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine was verifying the number of casualites, a U.N. spokesperson in Geneva said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia had broken the ceasefire around the southern port, which lies between Russian-backed separatist areas of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, annexed by Moscow from Ukraine in 2014.
“Russia continues holding hostage over 400,000 people in Mariupol, blocks humanitarian aid and evacuation. Indiscriminate shelling continues,” he wrote on Twitter. “Almost 3,000 newborn babies lack medicine and food.”
