A Russian airstrike devastated a maternity and children's hospital complex in the besieged southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, burying women and children under debris and injuring more than a dozen, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday.
The Mariupol City Council posted video on social media of the battered buildings.
"The destruction is enormous," the council said in a statement. "The building of the medical institution where the children were treated recently was completely destroyed. Information about the affected children is being clarified."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said people were trapped in the wreckage after the strike. He once again urged the West to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
"Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror?" Zelenskyy said in a Twitter post. "Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity."
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday reiterated that the U.S. and its allies won't establish a no-fly zone because it could drag the alliance further into the war.
The West has hit Russia with heavy economic sanctions, and on Wednesday the Kremlin threatened retaliation, also possibly in the form of sanctions, for the "economic war" it accused the U.S. of waging.
Russia has repeatedly tried to rationalize its attack on Ukraine and has asserted that the U.S. is creating chemical and biological weapons in the country. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki...
Russian military command has been lying for the fifth month in a row about battlefield “successes,” claiming that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. However, this...