Authorities in southern Ukraine reported that Russian forces bombed a maternity and children’s hospital on Wednesday. An attack that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, described as an “atrocity.”
The attack occurred, despite Russia committing to a 12-hour cease-fire to allow evacuees to flee a number of towns and cities.
The city council of Mariupol released a video depicting the city’s destroyed hospital, accusing Russian forces of dropping numerous bombs on it from the air.
“The devastation is severe,” the council stated. “The hospital facility where the children were recently treated has been entirely destroyed.”
Preliminary information revealed that at least 17 people were injured in the incident, including mothers and workers, according to police in the Donetsk region.
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Expressing his outrage over the attack, President Zelensky reiterated his plea for NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
“Now is the time to close the skies! Put an end to the killings! You have authority, but it appears that you are losing your humanity,” he stated on Telegram.
“People, children are under the wreckage,” Zelensky stated, referring to a direct strike by Russian Forces on the maternity facility as an “Atrocity.”
How much longer will the world be complicit in terror by ignoring it?”
Later that day, Zelensky described the strike as “final proof, proof of an ongoing genocide of Ukrainians.”
Without offering evidence, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated that Ukrainian military had “prepared battle positions” within the hospital.
After the bombing, video from the hospital clearly indicated that both patients and workers were present, including heavily pregnant women who were carried out of the facility.
The hospital attack drew widespread outrage, with the United Nations stating it will investigate the “horror reports” “immediately,” and that hospitals and health-care personnel should “never, ever” be a target.
Source: CNN.
