Russian strikes kill newborn
Zelenskyy slams moscow after attacks near hospital in Zaporizhzhia
Russian strikes killed a newborn baby at a Ukrainian maternity ward and two other civilians elsewhere, officials said as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “terror and murder”.
Ukrainian emergency services said Russian rockets smashed into a building overnight in Vilniansk, part of the southern Zaporizhzhia region, in the latest attack to damage medical facilities since war began nine months ago.
They distributed video of emergency service workers trying to free a man trapped waist-deep in the rubble of what appeared to be the destroyed maternity ward.
“As a result of a rocket attack on the territory of the local hospital, the two-storey building of the maternity ward was destroyed,” they said in a statement yesterday.
There was “a woman with a newborn baby as well as a doctor” inside the building at the time, they said.
The baby died while the woman and doctor were rescued from the rubble, rescuers said.
Russian strikes have several times hit Ukrainian hospitals since Russia invaded the country on Feb 24, including in the port city of Mariupol, which endured a harsh siege for several weeks before coming under Moscow’s control.
An attack last March on Mariupol hospital left three dead, including a child. Ukraine and its Western allies condemned the strike. Moscow insisted it was “staged”.
Elsewhere, two people were killed in shelling of a residential building and a clinic in the northeastern Kharkiv region, local governor Oleg Synegubov said yesterday.
“At around 7.40am local time Kupiansk was shelled. A nine-storey residential building and a clinic were damaged.
“Unfortunately, two people died: a 55-year-old woman and a 68year-old man,” Synegubov said on social media.
“The enemy has once again decided to try to achieve with terror and murder what it wasn’t able to achieve for nine months and won’t be able to achieve,” Zelenskyy said on social media following the attacks.