At least 37 Ukrainians killed, more than 170 injured in deadliest Russian missile strikes in months
July 8 (UPI) -- At least 37 people were killed and more than 170 injured Monday as dozens of Russian missiles slammed into cities across Eastern and Central Ukraine including the capital, Kyiv, where the country's largest children's hospital was badly damaged, authorities said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said more than 40 Russian missiles targeted Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, hitting apartment buildings, infrastructure and the Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital in the east of Kyiv. The Ukrainian Air Force Commander Lit. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk said it downed 30 missiles.
In total, nearly 100 facilities were damaged, Zelensky said.
Twenty-seven people, including three children, were killed in the capital, the Kyiv City Military Administration said on Telegram. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on social media that at least 96 others were injured.
Some 600 people were in the Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital in the east of the city when it came under attack, destroying two of its floors. Two people were killed -- a doctor and a relative of a patient at the facility -- and more than 50 injured, including seven children, the city administration said in a statement.
"This is horror and genocide! More than a hundred rescuers are sifting through the debris in the children's hospital, which was targeted by an enemy rocket," Klitschko said. "Patients from the children's hospital are being evacuated to the municipal hospital in the city."
Footage circulating online showed serious damage to the hospital's interior and exterior and children with IV drips outside awaiting evacuation as palls of smoke rose across the capital.
An Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital doctor told the BBC that 60%-70% of the complex had sustained severe damage with one part destroyed and another wing ablaze.
Health Minister Viktor Lyashko said cancer and intensive care were among the departments struck.
People caught out on the street took refuge underground in the nearby Lukianivska subway station.
Shortly afterward, four people were killed and three injured when the Isida maternity hospital, a private clinic, in the Dniprovskyi area of the city was hit by falling debris from a Russian missile downed by the city's air defenses.
It is not yet known if the victims were patients or hospital staff.
Zelensky condemned the attack on the hospital as well as residential buildings and infrastructure saying Russia could not claim ignorance of where its missiles are flying and must be held to account.
"Russia must be held fully accountable for all its crimes. Against people, against children, against humanity in general. It is very important that the world does not remain silent about this now, and that everyone sees what Russia is and what it is doing," he wrote in a post on X.
U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights framed the hospital attack as a continuation of Russia's ongoing onslaught targeting Ukraine's healthcare system. The advocacy group has document 1,442 Russian attacks on Ukraine healthcare facilities, workers and other medical infrastructure since the Kremlin launched its war on Feb. 24, 2022.
"Russia's strategy in Ukraine includes attacking babies and children. Domestic and international actors should intensify efforts to hold perpetrators accountable for these war crimes," liana Poltavets, PHR's Ukraine emergency response coordinator, said in a statement supplied to UPI.
"Again and again, we have witnessed Russian forces attack vulnerable patients, health workers, and hospitals across the country."
In Dnipropetrovsk province, 260 miles to the southeast of Kyiv, the military administration of Kryvyi Rih said at least 10 people had been killed there and 47 injured with one person killed and 12 injured to the East in Denipro, the country's fourth largest city.
Three more people were killed in the town of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, according to the province's governor Vadym Filashkin.
