KYIV (Reuters) – A newborn baby was killed in a Russian missile attack that hit a maternity hospital in the city of Vilniansk in southeastern Ukraine on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said.
The state emergency service said that at the time of the attack a woman with a newborn baby and a doctor had been in a maternity ward in a two-storey building that was destroyed.
The doctor and the mother were rescued but the baby died, it said on the Telegram messaging app under photos of rescue workers sifting through the rubble, with white smoke rising into the night sky.
Video footage posted by the state emergency service showed a man who appeareD to be a doctor being given water as rescuers tried to clear the rubble around him.
“Grief fills our hearts – a baby who had just appeared in the world has been killed,” Oleksandr Starukh, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region which includes Vilniansk, wrote on Telegram.
Reuters was unable immediately to verify the report independently. Russia did not immediately comment on the incident.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, condemned the attack in a Telegram post. Referring to Russian forces who invaded Ukraine in February as “terrorists”, he said Russia would be held responsible for “every Ukrainian life”.
(Editing by Timothy Heritage)
