According to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, children are buried under the rubble of a hospital in Mariupol that was destroyed by a Russian airstrike.
Zelenskyy tweeted that children were among those “under the wreckage” and the strike an “atrocity.”
Injured mothers were evacuated on makeshift stretchers, while soldiers cared for children, after Ukrainian officials say a Russian attack destroyed both a children's hospital and maternity ward. pic.twitter.com/qARLrfU6B3
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 9, 2022
From Sky News:
Mariupol’s city council said the maternity and children’s hospital had been destroyed, adding that it did not know any casualty figures but that “the destruction is colossal”.
The governor of Donetsk region said 17 people, including women in labour, were wounded in the airstrike.
The governor added that the airstrike happened during an agreed ceasefire period to allow civilians to safely escape.
And video footage from the hospital shows bloodied pregnant women being brought out on stretchers.
In the grounds there is a huge crater, estimated to be about 20ft deep and 30ft wide. According to former senior RAF Office Air Marshall Edward Stringer, the crater seems to be evidence of a large, general-purpose bomb of at least 1,000lbs – probably 2,000lbs.
He told Sky News this was not likely to be a cluster bomb and is more likely to have been a sophisticated missile.
