Three people, including a girl, killed in Mariupol pediatric hospital
Three people, including a child, were killed in the Russian bombardment of a pediatric hospital in Mariupol on Wednesday, the town hall of this port city announced on Thursday. “Three people died, including a little girl”, said the municipality on Telegram. The previous report, published the day before by the authorities, reported 17 people injured.
” Barbaric “, “immoral”, ” war crime “ : The shelling of a pediatric hospital by Russian forces in the besieged city of Mariupol provoked outrage from Ukrainian authorities and Westerners, as the Russian army approached Kiev on Thursday, according to the Ukrainian general staff. The attack came on the eve of talks on Thursday in Turkey between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers, their first face-to-face since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine two weeks ago.
French government spokesman Gabriel Attal denounced strikes on Thursday “inhuman and cowardly” . “I want to say it on behalf of the French government: Russia’s strikes against the Mariupol pediatric hospital are inhumane and cowardly. It is women, children, caregivers who have been targeted, it is unspeakable and we call again for a ceasefire.said Mr. Attal on RTL.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who condemned a ” war crime “, shared videos on Wednesday showing the destruction – after an air raid – of the establishment, which housed a maternity hospital and a pediatric hospital, in Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov in southeastern Ukraine. Interiors of buildings can be seen blown away, debris, sheets of paper and shards of glass littering the ground.
The White House, for its part, denounced a use ” barbaric “ of force against civilians, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the bombing a“immoral”.
The bombardment occurred while women were giving birth in the hospital, which had just been re-equipped, a member of the military administration of the Donetsk region told Agence France-Presse.
The Russian government did not deny the attack, but claimed that “nationalist battalions” Ukrainians were using the hospital as a firing base. The nine days of siege of Mariupol have already caused 1,207 deaths, the town hall said on Wednesday evening.