MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — The council of Mariupol, a southern port city in Ukraine, said Thursday that three people, including a child, were killed when a Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital, while 17 people — among them children, women and medical staff — were injured.
“Russian troops purposefully and ruthlessly destroy the civilian population of Mariupol,” the city council said on Telegram. “The whole world should know about Russia’s crime against humanity, against Ukraine and against the people of Mariupol!”
The blast tore the front off one of the buildings in the hospital complex and damaged several others. One pregnant woman was evacuated on a stretcher; a long bleeding gash on her left hip was visible in images from the scene. Another pregnant woman, bleeding from her forehead, walked down a staircase, a faded rose-print blanket draped over her shoulders, her possessions in a purple plastic bag. A flaming car sat on a square that was studded with gnarled, burned trees.
“What kind of country is this, Russia, which is afraid of hospitals and maternity hospitals and destroys them?” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a late-night video, appearing close to tears. “Were pregnant women going to fire at [the Russian city of] Rostov? Did someone in the maternity hospital abuse Russian-speakers? What was that? Was it the de-Nazification of the hospital?”
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