Rescuers search for more bodies at children’s hospital struck by Russia

Rescuers search for survivors after Russian missiles hit Ukrainian children's hospital, killing 42; international outcry ensues.

Rescuers searched the rubble at a children’s hospital on July 9 for more dead and wounded, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, a day after Russian missiles slammed into the facility and cities across the country in a massive daytime barrage. The death toll from the strikes rose to 42, officials said.

Mr. Zelenskyy said on the social platform X that 64 people were hospitalised in the capital, as well as 28 in Kryvyi Rih and six in Dnipro — both cities in central Ukraine.

It was Russia’s heaviest bombardment of Kyiv in almost four months and one of the deadliest of the war, hitting seven of the city’s 10 districts. The strike on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, which interrupted open-heart surgery and forced young cancer patients to take their treatments outdoors, drew an international outcry.

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The 10-story hospital, Ukraine's largest medical facility for children, was caring for some 670 patients at the time of the attack, Okhmatdyt’s Director General, Volodymyr Zhovnir, said on Tuesday. The missile hit a two-story wing of the hospital.

“The building where we conducted dialysis for children with kidney failure or acute intoxication is ruined entirely,” he told reporters, estimating the overall damage to the hospital at $2.5 million.

Danielle Bell, the head of a U.N. team tracking human rights violations in Ukraine, said at least two persons were killed at the hospital and some 50 people were injured, including seven children. The casualty figure would have been much higher if patients had not been taken to a bunker when air raid sirens first sounded, she added.