17 people wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors and children buried in the rubble
\n MARIUPOL
\nA Russian airstrike on a Mariupol maternity hospital that killed three people drew outrage on Thursday, with Ukrainian and Western officials branding it a war crime. As talks to reach a broad cease-fire failed, emergency workers renewed efforts to get vital food and medical supplies into besieged cities, and to get traumatized residents out.
\nUkrainian authorities said a child was among the dead in Wednesday\u2019s attack in the crucial southern port of Mariupol. Another 17 people were wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors and children buried in the rubble.
\nImages of pregnant women covered in dust and blood dominated news reports in many countries, and brought a new wave of horror at the 2-week-old war sparked by Russia\u2019s invasion, which has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, driven more than 2 million people from Ukraine and shaken the foundations of European security.
\nMillions more have been displaced inside the country. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said Thursday that about 2 million people \u2014 half the residents of the capital\u2019s metropolitan area \u2014 have left the city, which has become virtually a a fortress.
\n\u201cEvery street, every house \u2026 is being fortified,\u201d he said in televised remarks. \u201cEven people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands.\u201d
\nBombs also fell on two hospitals in a city west of Kyiv on Wednesday, its mayor said. The World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago.
\nAs the war entered its third week, Western officials said Russian forces have made little progress on the ground in recent days. But they have intensified the bombardment of Mariupol and other cities, trapping hundreds of thousands of people, with food and water running short.
\nTemporary cease-fires to allow evacuations and humanitarian aid have often faltered, with Ukraine accusing Russia of continuing their bombardments. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 35,000 people managed to get out on Wednesday from several besieged towns, and more efforts were underway on Thursday from towns and cities in eastern and southern Ukraine \u2014 including Mariupol \u2014 as well as the Kyiv suburbs.
\nThe Mariupol city council posted a video Thursday showing buses driving down a highway, with a note saying that a convoy bringing food and medicine was on the way despite several days of thwarted efforts to reach the city.
\n\u201cEveryone is working to get help to the people of Mariupol. And it will come,\u201d said Mayor Vadym Boychenko.
\nImages from the city, where hundreds have died and workers hurried to bury some of the bodies in a mass grave, have drawn condemnation from around the world. The living have resorted to breaking into shops for food or melting snow for water. The city has been without heat for days as nighttime temperatures fall below freezing and daytime ones hover just above it.
\nWhen the series of blasts hit the children\u2019s and maternity hospital in Mariupol, the ground shook more than a mile away. Explosions blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victims, carrying a bleeding woman with a swollen belly on a stretcher past burning and mangled cars. Another woman wailed as she clutched her child.
\nBritain\u2019s Armed Forces minister, James Heappey, said that whether hitting the hospital was \u201cindiscriminate\u201d fire into a built-up area or a deliberate targeting, \u201cit is a war crime.\u201d
\nUS Vice President Kamala Harris, on a visit to Ukraine\u2019s neighbor Poland, backed calls for an international war-crimes investigation into the invasion, saying \u201cthe eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of this aggression and these atrocities.\u201d
\nPolish President Andrzej Duda called the strike on the hospital an \u201cact of barbarity\u201d and said \u201cit is obvious to us that in Ukraine Russians are committing war crimes.\u201d
\nRegional Ukrainian police official Volodymir Nikulin, standing in the ruins, called the Mariupol attack \u201ca war crime without any justification.\u201d
\nRussian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed concerns about civilian casualties as \u201cpathetic shrieks\u201d from Russia\u2019s enemies. He claimed without providing evidence that the Mariupol hospital had been seized by far-right radical fighters who were using it as a base \u2014 despite the fact that photographs from the aftermath show pregnant women and children at the site.
\nSeveral rounds of talks have not stopped the fighting, and a meeting in a Turkish Mediterranean resort between Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba failed to yield much common ground.
\nIn their highest-level talks since the war began, the two sides discussed a 24-hour cease-fire but did not make progress, Kuleba said. He said Russia was still seeking \u201csurrender from Ukraine.\u201d
\n\u201cThis is not what they are going to get,\u201d he said, adding that he was willing to continue the dialogue.
\nFrench President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for an \u201cimmediate cease-fire\u201d in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.
\nLavrov also said Russia was ready for more negotiations but showed no sign of softening Moscow\u2019s demands. He said Putin could meet with Zelenskyy but only after further negotiations about Russia\u2019s broader grievances.
\nRussia has alleged that western-looking, US-backed Ukraine posed a threat to its security \u2014 but Western officials suspect Putin would like to install a government friendly to Moscow in Kyiv as part of efforts to draw the ex-Soviet state back into its orbit.
\nRussia\u2019s military is currently struggling, facing stronger than expected Ukrainian resistance and heavier losses of its own troops. But Putin\u2019s invading force of more than 150,000 troops retains possibly insurmountable advantages in firepower as it bears down on key cities.
\nDespite often heavy shelling on populated areas, American military officials reported little change on the ground over the previous 24 hours, other than Russian progress against the cities of Kharkiv in the east and Mykolaiv in the south, in heavy fighting.
\nWestern countries have sought to hasten the war\u2019s end by imposing punishing sanctions on Russia, and a cascade of global companies have abandoned the country, plunging its economy into isolation.
\nBritain added more oligarchs to its sanctions list on Thursday, including Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Premier League soccer club Chelsea. The government said Abramovich\u2019s assets \u2014 including Chelsea \u2014 were frozen, he was banned from visiting the UK and barred from transactions with UK individuals and businesses.
\nThe fighting has repeatedly raised the specter of a nuclear disaster. It knocked out power to the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant on Wednesday, raising fears about the spent radioactive fuel stored there that must be kept cool. But the UN nuclear watchdog agency said it saw \u201cno critical impact on safety.\u201d
\nUkrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk pleaded Thursday with the Russian military to allow access for repair crews to restore electricity to the plant, and to fix a damaged gas pipeline in the south that left Mariupol and other towns without heat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
17 people wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors and children buried in the rubble MARIUPOL A Russian airstrike on a Mariupol maternity hospital that killed three people drew outrage on Thursday, with Ukrainian and Western officials branding it a war crime. As talks to reach a broad cease-fire failed, emergency workers renewed efforts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[189,2473,4812],"class_list":{"0":"post-248828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-attack","9":"tag-talks","10":"tag-ukrainian-hospital"},"yoast_head":"\n