Arthur Greene
Children and pregnant women had to be pulled out of the rubble after Russian warplanes destroyed a maternity hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Thursday.
Three people, including a six-year-old girl, were killed while at least 17 others were injured when the hospital was hit multiple times by high-explosive Russian bombs.
Most of the hospital’s patients survived, after they were ordered to seek shelter in the basement minutes before the strikes occured. One woman reportedly gave birth there while the building above her came down.
In the aftermath, heavily pregnant women were pictured being carried away on stretchers over rubble, which littered the hospital courtyard, while others were reportedly trapped under it.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed that there were no pregnant women or children in the hospital when it was bombed. He claimed it was instead occupied by Ukrainian “radicals”.
“A children’s hospital, a maternity ward. How did they threaten the Russian Federation? What is this country, the Russian Federation, that is afraid of hospitals, maternity wards and is destroying them?” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Telegram.
“Hospitals and schools are destroyed. Churches and ordinary buildings are destroyed. People are killed. Children are killed. The aerial bombing of a children’s hospital is the ultimate evidence that genocide of Ukrainians is happening.”
Mariupol remains under constant shelling by Russian forces, who have surrounded the port city.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that the city’s 200,000 occupants are running dangerously low on food and water, and are having to brave freezing conditions without electricity or heating.
ICRC volunteers told the BBC that people have begun fighting for food and the city’s shops and pharmacies have been completely looted.
Images have emerged of 25 metre-long mass graves being dug, as the city’s deputy mayor, Serhiy Orlov, reports that 1,207 bodies have already been collected from the streets.
Image source: The Shillong Times
