KYIV: Russia rained missiles down on cities across Ukraine in broad daylight on Monday morning, killing at least 36 civilians and badly damaging Kyiv’s main children’s hospital in the deadliest air strike in months, officials said.
Parents holding babies walked in the street outside the hospital, dazed and sobbing after the rare daylight aerial attack. Windows had been smashed and panels ripped off and hundreds of Kyiv residents were helping to clear debris.
Air defences shot down 30 of 38 incoming missiles, the air force said. Fifty civilian buildings, including residential buildings, a business centre and two medical facilities were damaged in Kyiv, the central cities of Kryvyi Rih and Dnipro and two eastern cities, the interior minister said.
An online video obtained by Reuters, the location of which was verified using buildings in the footage, showed a missile falling from the sky towards the children’s hospital followed by a large explosion. The Security Service of Ukraine identified the missile as an Kh-101 cruise missile.
Twenty one people were killed in Kyiv and 65 more wounded in the main missile volley and another strike that came two hours later, emergency services said. Debris from the latter missile hit a different Kyiv hospital, killing seven people, they said.
Eleven were confirmed dead in Kryvyi Rih and 47 wounded, the emergency services said. Three people had been killed in the eastern town of Pokrovsk where missiles hit an industrial facility, the regional governor said. One person was also killed in the city of Dnipro, officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Ukraine would retaliate and called on Kyiv’s western allies to give a firm response to the attack.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had carried out strikes on defence industry targets and aviation bases in Ukraine.