Russia has launched another missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, killing three people, including a mother and child who were unable to reach a shelter, according to officials. The attack occurred in the early hours of Thursday, just minutes after air-raid sirens sounded throughout the city. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said that an additional 16 people were injured by debris from air defense systems shooting down incoming attacks. Ukraine’s general staff headquarters reported that Kyiv had been attacked by a volley of 10 Iskander ballistic missiles, all of which were shot down.
The city’s military administration said that some of the debris fell on a clinic and an adjacent building. A mother and child were killed minutes after the air-raid alert while trying to get into a shelter at the clinic, according to Mr. Klitschko and two emergency workers at the scene who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
City officials have opened a criminal investigation into the clinic and the administrators responsible for operating the shelter there, centered on whether the shelter was properly maintained and why it may have been inaccessible, Mr. Klitschko said. Police officers will now patrol bomb shelters during air raids to make sure they are open, he added.
Throughout May, Kyiv’s 3.6 million residents were dogged by 17 waves of aerial attacks coming at all hours, including assaults with drones and ballistic and hypersonic missiles. While Kyiv has been attacked since the first days of the war, the pace and intensity of the Russian assaults over the past month have been jarring even for civilians now accustomed to spending hours in bomb shelters and sleepless nights huddled in corridors. Thursday’s strikes seemed to suggest that the campaign would continue into June.
On Wednesday, in a speech commemorating International Children’s Day, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that at least 483 Ukrainian children had been killed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and that untold others had had their rights to a safe environment, education and health care violated by Russia’s invasion. Other estimates say the number of children killed may be even higher.
“For 15 months, Russian aggression and terror have been destroying not just buildings, but fundamental human rights — the fundamental rights of our children,” he said.
Officials in Kyiv said that some Children’s Day events scheduled for…
2023-06-01 07:20:07
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