In broad daylight on Monday, July 8, Russia rained missiles down on a main children’s hospital in Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine, killing at least 36 civilians in the deadliest wave of air strikes for months.
Parents carrying babies had been spotted, walking in the street outside the hospital after the attack, looking dazed and sobbing after the rare daylight aerial attack.
Smashed windows could also be seen their window panels ripped off. Hundreds of Kyiv residents also helped to clear debris.
The Ukraine government has declared Tuesday as a day of mourning, calling it one of the worst air attacks of the war. They had said that it indicated that Ukraine urgently needed an upgrade of its air defences from its Western allies.
Meanwhile, its air force had said that air defences had shot down 30 of 38 missiles. Fifty civilian buildings, including residential houses, a business centre and two medical facilities were damaged in Kyiv, the central cities of Kryvyi Rih and Dnipro and two eastern cities, according to the interior minister.
The Security Service of Ukraine had identified the missile as an Kh-101 cruise missile.
The Casualties
Accoridng to officials, Twenty-two people, two children included were killed in Kyiv, leaving 82 people wounded in the main missile volley and the other strike that came two hours later.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, eleven were confirmed dead and 64 wounded.
In the eastern town of Pokrovsk, the governor said that three people were killed where missiles hit an industrial facility.
What They’re Saying
“It was scary. I couldn’t breathe, I was trying to cover (my baby). I was trying to cover him with this cloth so that he could breathe,” Svitlana Kravchenko, a resident had informed news journalists.
Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had announced that Ukraine would retaliate and called on Kyiv’s Western allies to give a firm response to the attack.
“We will retaliate against these people, we will deliver a powerful response from our side to Russia, for sure. The question to our partners is: can they respond?” Zelenskiy who is visiting Poland said during a joint press conference with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
