Kyiv mourns as rescuers sift piles of rubble at a children's hospital hit by a Russian missile
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says rescue operations have stretched into a second day at a major Kyiv children’s hospital struck by a Russian missile
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Rescuers searched the rubble at a children’s hospital Tuesday for more dead and wounded, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, a day after Russian missiles slammed into the facility and cities across the country in a massive daytime barrage. The death toll from the strikes rose to 42, officials said.
Zelenskyy said on the social platform X that 64 people were hospitalized in the capital, as well as 28 in Kryvyi Rih and six in Dnipro — both cities in central Ukraine.
It was Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in almost four months and one of the deadliest of the war, hitting seven of the city’s 10 districts. The strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, which interrupted open-heart surgery and forced young cancer patients to take their treatments outdoors, drew an international outcry.
The 10-story hospital, Ukraine's largest medical facility for children, was caring for some 670 patients at the time of the attack, Okhmatdyt’s Director General, Volodymyr Zhovnir, said Tuesday. The missile hit a two-story wing of the hospital.