Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt children’s hospital was “highly likely” destroyed by a direct hit from a Russian missile on July 8. This conclusion was reached by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
This is reported by Reuters, Babel informs.
The head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Danielle Belle, said that at the time of the strike, there were 670 child patients and about a thousand hospital staff in the hospital.
Analysis of the video footage and the assessment made at the scene of the incident indicates a high probability that the children’s hospital was hit by a direct hit, rather than damaged by an air defense system, – Belle said.
She also added that her team, which visited the site on Monday, was unable to draw a definitive conclusion, but “the missile appears to have been launched by Russia”. If the hospital staff had not moved the children to the shelter during the first air raid alert, the number of victims could have been higher.
At the same time, Russian propaganda is promoting the version that the hospital was hit by an AIM-120 anti-aircraft missile from the NASAMS anti-aircraft system or a missile from the US Patriot system, which is defending the capital.
The attack on Okhmatdyt
On July 8, 2024, Russian troops attacked Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, and Dnipro with missiles of various types. One of the missiles hit Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, Okhmatdyt, in Kyiv, destroying it.
As a result, two adults (one of them a 30-year-old nephrologist Svitlana Lukyanchuk) were killed and 32 people were injured by the Russian missile strike on Okhmatdyt. Eight children were hospitalized with various injuries.
The Security Service of Ukraine claims that Okhmatdyt was destroyed by a Russian X-101 cruise missile launched by a bomber during a massive missile attack on Ukraine. In particular, a fragment of the X-101 wing deployment mechanism, a fragment of the X-101 jamming unit, the middle part of the X-101 cruise missile body, the tail section fairing and a fragment of the X-101 hydraulic unit, as well as fragments of the X-101 cruise missile engine casing with the inventory and serial numbers were found on the hospital’s territory.
