Shocking footage shows a Russian airstrike hitting an ambulance outside a Ukrainian children’s hospital where at least two people, including a child, were killed, according to authorities.
Monday’s security footage shows a handful of ambulances parked in Mykolaiv Oblast – with a sudden explosion hitting the left side of a yellow one closest to the camera.
As the area erupts in flames, the emergency vehicle shudders and its doors swing open from the impact as smoke blankets the area.
The governor of Mykolaiv region Vitaliy Kim posted the video on Facebook and wrote that the “attack on a secret medical facility was a children’s hospital.”
The comment was a sarcastic reference to Russia’s previous claims that other medical targets blown up – including a Mariupol maternity hospital – were secretly harboring neo-Nazi troops, not the pregnant patients who were left bloodied and terrified.
A sudden explosion hits an ambulance and flames engulf the vehicle
The head of the Mykolaiv regional council, Anna Zamazeeva, said that two people – a man and a child – died during Monday’s strike at the children’s hospital.
They were among the nine dead that day in the area, and 61 others were injured, she said, calling it “another horrible day” in a “war without rules”.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it had a team of four there at the time – and their vehicle was one of those whose windows “were blown out by the blasts”.
Smoke covers the ambulance and the surrounding area. storyful
A cancer hospital, which also treats war wounded, was also hit, according to MSF, along with the neighboring children’s hospital – which said the damage “may be consistent with the use of cluster bombs”.
“Several explosions occurred in the immediate vicinity of our staff within about 10 minutes,” Michel-Olivier Lacharité, MSF’s Ukraine operations manager, said in a statement.
“As they exited the area, the MSF team saw injured people and at least one dead,” he said, noting that all of the charity’s staff took cover and survived.
The force of the explosion blasts open the ambulance doors. storyful
“The mid-afternoon bombardment of such a large area within a residential neighborhood must cause civilian casualties and hit public buildings,” Lacharité says, adding that at least three hospitals were hit in just two days.
“Hospitals, patients and medical staff must remain protected from attacks.”