Newborn dies after rocket hits Ukrainian maternity hospital

A two-day-old baby died after an overnight rocket attack destroyed the maternity ward of a hospital in southern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday. Ukraine’s first lady said the attack caused “horrible pain” and “we will never forget and we will never forgive,” she vowed.

A baby’s mother and a doctor were dragged alive from the rubble of Vilnyansk, near the city of Zaporizhia.

The region’s governor said the rocket was made in Russia. The strike adds to the horrific casualties suffered by hospitals and other medical facilities, and their patients and staff, in the Russian invasion, which this week enters its 10th month.

They have been in a row of firefights since the beginning, including an airstrike on March 9 that destroyed a maternity hospital in the now-occupied port city of Mariupol.

“At night, a Russian monster launched a giant rocket into the small maternity ward of a hospital in Vilnyansk. Sadness overwhelms our hearts — a newborn baby has been killed. I work in , ” wrote regional governor Oleksandr Starov on Telegram’s messaging app.

First Lady Olena Zelenska wrote on Twitter that a two-day-old baby boy had died in a strike, expressing her condolences. Told.

A photo posted by the governor showed thick smoke billowing over a pile of rubble as it was being combed out by emergency workers against a dark night sky.

State emergency services initially said the baby had died and that a new mother and a doctor had been pulled from the rubble, and they were the only people in the ward at the time. revealed to be the mother of

Emergency services said the two-story building was destroyed.

trendy now

trendy now

Vilnyansk is a Ukrainian territory north of the Zaporizhia region, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Other parts of Zaporizhia are Russian territory and one of four regions of Ukraine illegally annexed by Russia in September after an internationally condemned phony referendum.

The efforts of health workers have been complicated by a relentless Russian attack on Ukraine’s infrastructure in recent weeks, which officials say has caused extensive damage to the power grid. It is getting worse, and almost two weeks ago Russia withdrew, cutting off power and water after months of occupation.

Many doctors in the city work in the dark, unable to use elevators to transport patients to operations, and use headlamps, mobile phones and flashlights to perform operations. of hospitals have lost key equipment.

“No respirator, no x-ray machine… I only have one portable ultrasound machine, which I always carry with me.”

After a strike in Kherson severely injured 13-year-old Artur Vobrikov on Tuesday, a team of medical staff carefully maneuvered the sedated boy up six flights of narrow stairs to an operating room before amputating his left arm. Did.

Three children injured in Russian attacks have been admitted to hospital this week, Marishchuk said, half the number of children hospitalized in the nine months since the invasion began. Picking up shrapnel fragments found in the stomach of a 14-year-old boy, he said the children had arrived with severe head injuries and ruptured internal organs.

Artur’s mother, Natalia Voblikova, sat with her daughter in the dark hospital waiting for the operation to finish.

“You can’t even call[Russians]animals, because they take care of themselves,” Bobrykova said, wiping tears from her eyes. “But children… why kill children?”

In the northeastern city of Kupiansk, Russian artillery fire killed two civilians and injured two more on Wednesday morning, local officials said.

A 55-year-old woman and a 68-year-old man died after a nine-story house and a clinic were damaged, Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov told Telegram.

Kupiansk was an early victim of a Ukrainian lightning strike northeast of Kharkiv in September, which, like other recaptured settlements, was shelled by Russian forces in what many Ukrainian officials described as retaliation. repeated.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, “Terrorist states continue to fight civilians and civilian objects.”

“The enemy has decided again to try to achieve with terrorism and murder what he has not been able to achieve for nine months and cannot achieve,” he said on Telegram.

Mednick reported from Kherson, Ukraine.

© 2022 The Canadian Press