Children's Hospital In Ukraine Hit By Russian Attack Despite Ceasefire, White House: Terrible

Mariupol Bombing by Russia. (Wikimedia Commons/mvs.gov.ua/Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - The United States condemned the bombing of a children's hospital in Ukraine on Wednesday, in which officials said Russian airstrikes buried patients under rubble despite a ceasefire agreement to allow people out of the besieged city of Mariupol.

The attack, which authorities say injured women in labor and left children in ruins, was the latest grim incident in the 14-day invasion, the biggest attack on a European country since 1945.

The devastation came despite Russia's pledge to stop shelling so that at least some of the trapped civilians could escape the city, where hundreds of thousands have taken shelter without water or electricity for more than a week.

Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted video footage of what it said was a hospital showing holes where windows should have been in the three-story building. Huge piles of smoldering debris littered the scene.

"It is appalling to see the kind of barbaric use of military force to pursue innocent civilians in a sovereign nation," said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

Meanwhile, the UN's human rights agency said its monitoring mission was verifying the toll.

"The incident adds to our deep concern about the indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas and civilians caught up in active hostilities in various areas," said spokeswoman Liz Throssell.

The governor of the Donetsk region said 17 people were injured in the incident. Meanwhile, the city council said the hospital had been hit by airstrikes several times, causing "colossal" destruction.

Ukraine accuses Russia of violating a ceasefire around the southern port.

Russian bombing of Mariupol. (Wikimedia Commons/mvs.gov.ua/Міністерство ав аїни)

"Indiscriminate shootings continue," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

Furthermore, Ukraine says 67 children have died across the country since the invasion and at least 1,170 civilians died in Mariupol. It was not possible to verify the numbers.

Satellite imagery company Maxar said images from the previous day showed extensive damage to homes, apartment buildings, grocery stores, and a shopping center in Mariupol.

To note, Humanitarian casualties, including more than 2 million refugees from Ukraine, and property damage continued to grow on Wednesdays since the invasion began on February 24.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said houses had been reduced to rubble across Ukraine. "Hundreds of thousands of people have no food, water, heating, electricity, and medical care."

Thousands of people continue to flood into neighboring countries. After hiding in a basement to shelter from the Russian bombing, Irina Mihalenka left her home in the northeastern Black Sea port of Odessa, she told Reuters in Isaccea, Romania.

"As we were walking, the bridge was blown up. And when we crossed the rubble, because there was no other way out, there were Russian bodies (soldiers) lying there," he said.

Local officials said some civilians had left several Ukrainian cities via safe corridors, including from Sumy in the east and Enerhodar in the south. However, Russian troops prevented buses from evacuating civilians from Bucha, a city outside the capital Kyiv.

Separately, Russia's Defense Ministry blamed Ukraine for the failure of the evacuation. A senior US defense official said there were indications the Russian military was using non-precision-guided bombs.

"Russian forces did not fire on civilian targets," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, quoted by Reuters. Russia has called its attacks a "special operation" to disarm its neighbors and expel leaders it calls neo-Nazis.