Russia Brutally Shells Maternity Hospital and Children’s Hospital in Mariupol: Reaction of World

The Russian occupier continues to besiege and destroy the Ukrainian town of Mariupol. This time the enemy purposefully carried out an air attack on an orphanage and a maternity hospital.

“So far, Russian-occupation forces dropped several bombs on a children’s hospital. The damage is enormous. The building of the medical facility where the children were recently treated has been completely destroyed. Information on the injured children is being clarified. There are 17 injured people in the maternity hospital,” the Mariupol Town Council said in a statement.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called the Russian aggressors’ air strike on the maternity hospital in Mariupol a “savagery” as a result of which people, including children, were trapped under rubble.

The world’s reaction to the inhuman cruelty of the Russians was immediate. In particular, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that despite their attention to the Soviet Union’s role in World War II, the Russians are now treating the population of Ukrainian cities in the same way as the Nazis did towards the people of besieged Leningrad.

Instead, the UN is concerned about human rights abuses due to Russia’s invasion. The deliberate attack on civilian housing and critical infrastructure is a violation of international law in armed conflict and entails individual and state responsibility for such actions, said UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing Balakrishnan Rajagopal.

Putin kills innocent women and children, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic commented on the attack on Mariupol. The Czech PM called the Russian army strike a war crime. He called for Russia’s international isolation to be strengthened because of the killing of innocent women and children.

In turn, the UN Children’s Fund strongly condemned such attacks and again called for an immediate ceasefire. Catherine Russell, the organisation’s executive director, admitted that she was shocked by the information about the attack on the maternity hospital in Mariupol.

“According to reports, small children and women in labor were found under the rubble of the destroyed buildings. We do not yet know the number of victims, but we are afraid of the worst,” she said.

It will be recalled that as of 8 March, the number of Russian aggression victims among the civilian population rose to 1,424, including 516 killed and 908 wounded, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Natalia Tolub