Kyiv children’s hospital hit as Russian missile attack kills at least 29 in Ukraine

An unknown number of people have been trapped under rubble after Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital was hit during a daylight Russian missile barrage that the authorities said had killed at least 29 people across the country.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed retaliation as he said Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt hospital, the main treatment centre in the country for children with cancer, had taken a direct missile hit. The strike was part of one of the heaviest attacks on the capital since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

“Russia cannot be unaware of where its missiles are landing and must be held fully accountable for all its crimes: against individuals, against children and against humanity as a whole” Zelenskiy posted on the Telegram messaging app.

Ihor Klymenko, the interior minister, said five people had been confirmed dead in the Kyiv hospital attack and at least four more had been injured.

The strike largely destroyed the hospital’s toxicology ward. Hundreds of rescue workers and volunteers joined the effort to clear the debris and search for survivors. Officials and emergency staff said it was not immediately clear how many doctors and patients remained trapped under the rubble.

“We are extracting whoever we can. We don’t know the number of people trapped there,” said the health minister, Viktor Liashko, outside the hospital.

Maria Soloshenko, 21, a nurse in the toxicology ward, said hospital staff had been in the process of moving the children to a bomb shelter when the explosion occurred. “There was immediate panic when the strike hit,” she said, her gloves covered in blood.

Soloshenko said children as young as 18 months had to be urgently taken off dialysis and quickly evacuated through the building’s windows.

The Guardian witnessed many young cancer patients in distress during the evacuation, some barely clothed and with medical tubes still attached to them.

Tanya Lapshina, a nurse in the trauma department, where the facade was ripped off by the blast, said they managed to move all the children to a bomb shelter.

She said: “It was complete chaos. The children were in panic, crying in the bunker. There are no words for this. It is awful. I am still shaking.”

Ukraine’s presidential office published an image showing one child with a head injury.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the attack on the capital was one of the heaviest since Russia’s invasion began more than two years ago. Thanks to western-supplied defences, the city had experienced a relatively peaceful period before Monday’s strike.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, shared an image on X that appeared to show a Russian missile over Kyiv moments before it struck a hospital, identifying the rocket as a Kh-101 cruise missile.

The search efforts at the hospital were hindered by air-raid alarms that forced emergency staff to take shelter.

Strikes were also reported in other parts of the country. In Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskiy’s home town, 10 people were killed and 31 were injured, said Oleksandr Vilkul, the mayor. Another three people died in Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine when missiles hit an industrial facility, said the Donetsk regional governor.

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In total at least 29 people across the country were killed, Ukrainian officials said. Zelenskiy said 40 missiles were used in the attack.

Russia, which has targeted civilian infrastructure throughout the war, denied responsibility for deaths on Monday. In a statement, the defence ministry attributed the incident, without directly referencing the hospital blast, to Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles.

Western leaders strongly condemned the attack. The Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, wrote on X: “I am struck by the images of the bombings in Kyiv which also hit a children’s hospital. War crimes that must be condemned by the entire international community. The [Italian] government will continue to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine and its people.”

The International Rescue Committee said the attack was part of a broader pattern of Russian strikes on medical facilities since the invasion.

“No child should grow up under the threat of missile strikes. No child should risk dying amid the rubble of hospitals meant to be safe havens for healing and recovery,” the IRC said in the statement. “Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the WHO [World Health Organization] has recorded nearly 1,700 attacks on healthcare facilities in Ukraine.”

The strikes on Monday occurred a day before Nato leaders are due to meet in Washington for their yearly summit, where they are expected to announce new measures to boost Ukraine’s air defence capabilities.

During a press conference in Warsaw after a meeting with the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, Zelenskiy urged Kyiv’s allies to make a decisive response to the attack.

“I would also like to hear from our partners [about] a greater resilience and a strong response to the blow that Russia has once again dealt to our people, to our land, to our children,” he said, adding that he was waiting for concrete steps from the west to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences and protect its energy sector.