The shelling of a pediatric hospital in Mariupol, south-eastern Ukraine, left 17 injured. Boris Johnson blasted the attack as “immoral”.
Seventeen adults were injured Wednesday in the bombardment by the Russian army of a pediatric hospital in Mariupol, a port in southeastern Ukraine, announced a regional official, Pavlo Kirilenko. “There are 17 confirmed injured among hospital staff,” he told Ukrainian television, adding that “there was no child” among the injured and “no death”, according to a first report.
A few minutes earlier, Mr Kirilenko had written on his Facebook page: “Everything was destroyed in an airstrike by Russian aircraft over Mariupol. Instantly”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reacted quickly to the announcement of the bombing of this hospital, indicating then on Twitter that “people, children are under the rubble”. “Atrocity! (…) Stop these murders”, he again denounced.
In a video released by the Ukrainian presidency, the interior of buildings can be seen blown away, with debris, sheets of paper and pieces of glass littering the ground. In another video released by the national police Facebook page and shot outside the hospital, several charred cars and a crater testify to this air raid.
The shocked world
At least 19 attacks have been perpetrated against health care facilities, health personnel and ambulances, killing at least ten people, since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, according to data from the World Health Organization. Health (WHO). In addition to Mr. Zelensky, the international community reacted quickly, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson castigating an “immoral” attack, the UN recalling that no health facility “should be a target”.
In Ukraine, Liudmyla Denisova, in charge of human rights at the Ukrainian Parliament, denounced on her Telegram channel “an example of crime against humanity and genocide against the Ukrainian people”. For his part, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba deplored the “barbarism” of the Russian army, again imploring the West to “give planes, now”, a request repeated in recent days by Kiev to face the crisis. Russian army.
To read :War in Ukraine, our reporters on the front line
Some 300,000 civilians have been pinned down for days by fighting in the strategic port of Mariupol, in the south-east of the country, on the Sea of Azov, deprived of water, food and electricity and where humanitarian aid couldn’t happen.
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