Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
—
A Russian missile strike partially destroyed a children’s hospital in Kiev on Monday, sending terrified patients and their families fleeing for their lives and leading authorities to fear many more people could be trapped under the rubble.
Moscow launched a daring daytime air raid on urban targets across Ukraine during the morning rush hour, killing at least 36 people and wounding 137, according to Ukrainian emergency services. The massive bombings hit the capital, as well as the Dnipro, Krivoy Rih, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk regions.
Emergency services updated on Telegram, saying the latest figures included deaths and injuries in the capital, bringing the death toll to 22. The attack on Okhmatdyt Hospital in Kyiv killed two people and injured at least 16 others.
It is Ukraine’s largest pediatric medical center and is crucial to treating the country’s sickest children, with around 7,000 surgeries performed there each year, including to treat cancer and blood disorders, according to Dmytro Rubinet, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman.
Video from the scene showed volunteers working with police and security forces digging through rubble as smoke rose from the hospital, and staff described how they rushed to evacuate children to safety after the attack. Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Lyashko said the intensive care unit, oncology department and surgery were damaged.
More than 600 patients had been evacuated from the hospital and over 100 had been transferred to other medical facilities, Lyashko said, according to state news agency Ukrinform.
“The main task here is to rescue people from the rubble and provide assistance to those we can reach, as we have already evacuated all the first evacuees,” Lyashko said in a Telegram post.
The attack was part of rare daylight bombing raids on Ukrainian cities, some of which are densely populated areas far from the front line. The attack came a day before U.S. President Joe Biden is to host a key NATO summit in Washington where new announcements are expected about NATO’s military, political and financial support for Kiev.
On Monday, Russian forces attacked a private medical facility in Kyiv affiliated with the Adonis network, killing seven more people, Adonis said. Five of the dead were staff members and two were patients, the company said.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Monday that Moscow had used long-range high-precision weapons to attack “Ukrainian military-industrial facilities and an airbase of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
Gleb Galanich/Reuters
Doctors and passersby help clear rubble after the attack.
“It was scary, but we survived,” senior nurse Natalia Sardudinova said of the moment the attack hit the hospital.
“It was so loud, the windows were breaking,” she told CNN. “As soon as the alarm went off, the kids were taken out into the hallway.”
She said her two children were in the operating room at the time of the explosion, but were both moved to an underground shelter after the operations were completed.
“Everything was engulfed in smoke and there was no air to breathe. Doctors were cut by shrapnel. Windows and doors were blown out. One nurse at the hospital was seriously injured,” Sardudinova added. “My hands are still shaking. Now we can’t let anyone in. We’re afraid the hospital will collapse.”
Yulia Vasilenko, the mother of an 11-year-old cancer patient in the hospital, said her son Denis had taken refuge outside after the airstrike.
“My son is on painkillers. He has cancer. He hasn’t taken his medicine for half a day. They took him down the stairs from the third floor. There was smoke and terrible dust,” she said.
Irina Filimonova, a senior nurse in the pediatric urology department, told CNN that a two-year-old baby was undergoing surgery when the attack happened.
“The electricity went out, everything went out. We took out our tools and shone our flashlights. Everything was quickly stitched up,” Filimonova said. “They took the baby (to a shelter). I immediately ran to help clear the rubble. Several of my fellow nurses and doctors working in the operating room were cut by glass shards. Our unit was devastated.”
Another operating room nurse, Oksana Moshchuk, said they had taken refuge in the emergency room when the explosion shook the building. Medical teams then had to put out a fire in the operating room, which included the operating table, she added.
“Thankfully we are all alive. One of my colleagues was seriously injured with multiple cuts and shrapnel wounds and was taken away in an ambulance. I also have minor shrapnel wounds but am OK. It was very scary. I was worried about my children,” she said.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement that a UN team that visited the site after the airstrikes saw “amid the chaos, dust and rubble, health workers hastily set up triage areas and children receiving cancer treatment in hospital beds set up in parks and on the streets.”
“Shockingly, one of the attacks caused extensive damage to the intensive care unit, surgery and oncology departments of Okhmadit, Ukraine’s largest specialized pediatric hospital, and destroyed the pediatric toxicology department, where children receive dialysis,” Turk said.
Gleb Galanich/Reuters
Medical staff and local residents are clearing rubble from the damaged area of the hospital and searching for survivors.
The UN Security Council is due to hold a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss Russia’s deadly attack on a children’s hospital after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to retaliate for the attack and called an emergency meeting.
The Ukrainian leader said in a post on X that the exact number of casualties at the hospital was still unknown and that “there are people under the rubble,” but that everyone from doctors to local residents were helping to clear the rubble in the aftermath of the airstrikes.
“Apartment buildings, infrastructure and a children’s hospital were damaged. All services are working to rescue as many people as possible,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X.
Ukraine shot down 30 of the 38 missiles fired by Russia in Monday’s attack, the Ukrainian Air Force commander said in a statement, adding that Russia used ballistic, cruise, guided and air-launched ballistic missiles.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov called for more air defense systems to shore up the war-torn country. President Zelensky has repeatedly called on Western countries to build more air defense systems to better protect cities. Last month, the president praised Biden for prioritizing the deployment of air defense systems after signing a security agreement between the two countries.
Air raid sirens continued to sound over Kiev, and CNN footage showed evacuees outside the hospital pushing children on stretchers to the safety of a shelter, before scores of volunteers delivered much-needed supplies and donations to the hospital, including water, food, medicine and diapers.
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Ukraine’s prosecutor general on Monday sent evidence of Monday’s attack by Russia to the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s office.
As European countries condemned the shelling, France called for “this attack to be added to the list of war crimes for which Russia will be held responsible.” Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack on the hospital against innocent children a “most despicable act.” Catherine Russell, executive director of the UN Children’s Fund, said the devastating damage to the medical facilities was “a brutal reminder that no place is safe for the children of Ukraine.”
According to the World Health Organization, there have been more than 1,600 attacks with heavy weapons on medical facilities in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began, killing 141 people.
Last December, 12 pregnant women and four newborns had a lucky escape from a maternity hospital in Dnipro after it was badly damaged in an airstrike. This came less than a month after Russian forces crossed the border and sparked international condemnation when a maternity and pediatric hospital in Mariupol was bombed.
“This is a truly difficult day for our homeland. Today marks one of the largest missile attacks on our homeland,” Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko told CNN’s Becky Anderson.
This story has been updated with additional information.
