Russia is being accused of orchestrating carnage and war crimes in the port city of Mariupol after bombing destroyed its maternity hospital and Ukraine said the Kremlin was “holding hostage” some 400,000 inhabitants, including 3,000 infants.
It was one of three attacks on Ukrainian hospitals yesterday, according to reports. Bombs are also reported to have fallen on two hospitals in the city of Zhytomyr, which is about 150km west of Kyiv.
Armed forces minister James Heappey said the attack on the maternity hospital was a “war crime”.
He said: “Western countries are working together to make sure that evidence is gathered in the best way so that people can be held to account.
“But let’s be clear – what Putin is doing is not a war waged between two militaries. He has besieged a number of Ukrainian cities, and he’s waged a war against Ukrainian civilians.”
Civilians continued to find themselves paying the highest price in Vladimir Putin’s invasion as the days-long effort by Ukraine to establish humanitarian corridors finally saw evacuations in some Kyiv suburbs and the city of Sumy.
But the agreement struck for a 12-hour ceasefire in six locations appeared to fall apart elsewhere with attempts by residents to flee locations, including the vicinity of Kharkiv and in particular Mariupol, thwarted by what Ukraine said were fresh Russian assaults.
The situation in Mariupol, a major port on the Black Sea coast encircled by Moscow’s forces, was especially grim as footage emerged of the aftermath of an airstrike on the city’s combined children’s and maternity hospital during what the Ukrainian authorities said was an agreed ceasefire period.
City officials said an initial assessment found 17 casualties, including a six-year-old child. Rescuers were seen carrying one heavily pregnant and bleeding woman from the building while another woman sobbed as she clutched her child. A bomb crater caused by the blast which ripped the front from one building was several metres deep.
The Russian army knew that they were bombing a maternity hospital in Mariupol, the deputy mayor of the city has claimed.
Sergei Orlov told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday: “I am absolutely sure that they know about this facility.
“This is the third hospital that they have destroyed in the city. The previous day they destroyed hospital number nine by artillery shelling. This was a Covid hospital with 300 beds.
“They have also attacked and destroyed a blood collection station in Mariupol. So, it is the third hospital, I’m absolutely sure they know what are their targets.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined international condemnation of the attack, tweeting: “There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenceless.”
The inhabitants of the port, which is a strategic target for the Kremlin’s troops because it stands between annexed Crimea and the breakaway pro-Russian enclaves in the eastern region of Donbas, have endured more than a week without power and water while besieged.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said the Kremlin was deliberately keeping Mariupol’s population, including infants, captive while attempting to raze the city. He said: “Russia continues holding hostage over 400,000 people in Mariupol, blocks humanitarian aid and evacuation.
“Indiscriminate shelling continues. Almost 3,000 newborn babies lack medicine and food. Force Russia to stop its barbaric war on civilians and babies.”
The mid-afternoon attack on the maternity hospital was described by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as an “atrocity”. The deliberate targeting of hospitals is formally considered a war crime under UN rules.
Mr Zelensky tweeted that he believed there were “people, children under the wreckage” of the hospital, which had previously been hit by Russian bombardments.
Footage of the aftermath of the attack showed women being led to safety while inside colourfully painted hallways were strewn with twisted metal and room after room with blown-out windows and destroyed equipment. Outside, fires burned amid blasted trees and debris covered the ground.
In Moscow, the Kremlin denied responsibility for the attack while the Russian president attempted to deflect blame for the stuttering evacuation of civilians on Ukrainian “nationalist units”. The Kremlin said that Putin had told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a phone call that Russian efforts to organise humanitarian corridors had been “hampered” by Ukrainian forces.”
In Irpin, the suburb northwest of Kyiv which has seen some of the most vicious fighting in recent days, civilians were able to stream out of the town, making their way across the slippery wooden planks of the makeshift bridge that replaced the concrete crossing blown up by Ukrainian forces to halt the Russian advance.
More on Russia-Ukraine war
Firefighters could be seen dragging one elderly man to safety in a wheelbarrow while another evacuee was conveyed towards the capital in a shopping trolley.
In the city of Sumy, to the east of Kyiv, some 5,000 people, including foreign students, were evacuated on a fleet of buses on Tuesday while there were also evacuations in Enerhodar in the south. But efforts elsewhere were stymied, with local authorities in Bucha, another town outside Kyiv, saying Russian forces were preventing a convoy of 50 buses from leaving.
Some 2.2 million refugees have now left Ukraine in the two weeks since the invasion began. The UN in Geneva said it had been able to so far document 1,424 civilian casualties, including 516 fatalities – but it said the real figure would be “considerably higher”.
In its latest assessment, the Ministry of Defence in London said fighting was continuing in the northwest of Kyiv, where according to one estimate Moscow has also deployed mercenaries and Chechen militias to bolster its forces.
The cities of Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol also continue to be heavily shelled as Russian forces attempt to encircle Kyiv and break out of the Black Sea coast to approach targets in the centre and west of Ukraine.
In Mariupol, city workers sought to use a lull in the shelling yesterday to bury some 70 people in a mass grave. The bodies, which included some soldiers but consisted mostly of civilians, were interred without ceremony nor any mourners present.
At the gates to the cemetery, one woman stood to ask if her mother was among those being buried. She was, the workers told her.
