A maternity and children’s hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has been destroyed by Russian air strikes, officials say. Regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that at least 17 people were wounded, including women in labor. Russia’s bombing of the maternity hospital again prompted Ukraine’s leader to again demand the world help. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took to Twitter to rebuke Western allies’ refusal to institute a no-fly zone over the area to combat Russian fighter jets, saying: “People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity”
Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victim from the hospital at the coastal city of Mariupol — where bodies are piling up so fast that locals have begun burying them in mass graves. Regional police official, Volodymir Nikulin, said of the bombing: “Today Russia committed a huge crime. It is a war crime without any justification.” The airstrike occurred during what was supposed to be a regional cease-fire in the already “apocalyptic’’ city to allow safe evacuations of thousands of innocent residents. However, Russian troops have repeatedly violated their pledge to stop attacks along the safety corridors, and local officials in Mariupol are now using mass graves to bury some of the thousands they say have been killed in “pure genocide.’’
While Ukraine insisted that Russian forces deliberately targeted the hospital, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Wednesday, “Russian forces do not fire on civilian targets.” However when asked about the issue at a separate briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said, “Obviously that’s a horrific outcome. regardless of whether it was intentional or not. If it’s true — we have no reason to doubt that it’s true — we just can’t independently verify, it’s just another indicator of the supreme sacrifices that the Ukrainian people are making that they shouldn’t have to make. We’re talking, you know, families, children, killed, wounded, displaced, all of it, all of it avoidable. All of it completely avoidable.”
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