Rescue workers clear debris after a missile strike on the Okhmadyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, 8 July 2024. EPA-EFE/SERGEY DOLZHENKO
The United Nations Security Council is to convene in New York on Tuesday morning to discuss Monday’s Russian airstrikes on Kyiv at the request of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Slovenia and Ecuador, Reuters reported.
UN Secretary General António Guterres strongly condemned the Russian strikes, calling its attacks on a children’s hospital and another medical facility in Kyiv “particularly shocking”, according to Reuters.
The UK’s permanent representative to the UN, Barbara Woodward, wrote on X that Britain would “call out Russia’s cowardly and depraved attack”, while the European Union’s Diplomatic Service reiterated that under international humanitarian law, hospitals enjoy special protection.
Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, countered that Russia would use the meeting to “acquaint colleagues with the facts, which are in stark contrast to the Ukrainian and Western versions of this incident”.
The Russian Defence Ministry claimed on Monday that it was in fact debris from Ukraine’s own air defence systems that struck the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, rather than its own missiles.
The death toll from Monday’s strikes on Kyiv, meanwhile, has been revised upwards to 31, four of whom are children, the head of the Kyiv region military administration Serhiy Popko said on Tuesday, adding that a further 117 people had been injured. Emergency workers were continuing their attempts to retrieve people from the rubble, it said.
Kyiv’s Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko declared Tuesday a day of mourning for those killed in the Russian attacks.
