Day of mourning after 'brutal' Russian air strikes kill dozens

A day of mourning is being held in Ukraine after one of the worst waves of Russian missile strikes in months killed at least 41 and injured more than 170.Russian missiles blasted cities across Ukraine on Monday, damaging the country's largest children's hospital and other buildings in a fierce assault that interrupted heart surgeries and forced young cancer patients to take their treatments outdoors.

The daytime barrage targeted five Ukrainian cities with more than 40 missiles of different types, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.

Ukraine's air force said it intercepted 30 missiles. Tallies of casualties from the sites of attacks in different regions totalled at least 41.

Strikes in Kryvyi Rih, Mr Zelensky's birthplace in central Ukraine, killed 10 people and injured 47 in what the head of city administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, said was a massive missile attack.

Mr Zelensky said on social media: "It is very important that the world should not be silent about it now and that everyone should see what Russia is and what it is doing."

Russia denied attacking the hospital and said the strikes hit military targets.

In a statement, US President Joe Biden called the missile strikes "a horrific reminder of Russia's brutality."

"It is critical that the world continues to stand with Ukraine at this important moment and that we not ignore Russian aggression," the statement said.

Western leaders who have backed Ukraine in the war are holding a three-day Nato summit in Washington beginning on Tuesday.

They will look at how they can reassure Ukraine of the alliance's unwavering support and offer Ukrainians hope that their country can come through Europe's biggest conflict since the Second World War.

At the Okhmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv, rescuers are searching for people under the rubble of a partially collapsed, two-storey wing of the facility.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 16 people, seven of them children, were injured.

On the hospital's main 10-storey building, windows and doors were blown out and walls were blackened.

Blood spattered the floor in one room. The intensive care unit, operating theatres and oncology departments were all damaged, officials said.

Medical personnel and local people searched for children and medical workers. Volunteers formed a line, passing bricks and other debris to each other.

"It was scary. I couldn't breathe, I was trying to cover (my baby). I was trying to cover him with this cloth so that he could breathe," Svitlana Kravchenko, 33, told Reuters.

The attack forced the hospital to shut down and evacuate. Some mothers carried their children away on their backs. Others waited in the courtyard with their children as calls to doctors' phones rang unanswered.

A few hours after the initial strike, another air raid siren sent many mothers with their children hurrying to the hospital's shelter.

Led by torchlight through the shelter's dark corridors, mothers carried their bandaged children in their arms and medics carried them on trolleys. Volunteers handed out sweets in an effort to calm the children.

Russia's defence ministry said the strikes targeted Ukrainian defence plants and military air bases and were successful. It denied aiming at any civilian facilities and claimed without offering evidence that pictures from Kyiv indicated the damage was caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile.

Since early in the war that is stretching into its third year, Russian officials have regularly claimed that Moscow's forces never attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, despite what officials in Kyiv say and Associated Press reporting on the ground.

Elsewhere in Kyiv, where seven of the city's 10 districts were hit in the heaviest Russian bombardment of the capital in almost four months, the strikes killed seven people and injured 25, officials said.

About three hours after the first strikes, more missiles hit Kyiv and partially destroyed a private medical centre. Four people were killed there, Ukraine's Emergency Service said.

The daylight attacks included Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, one of the most advanced Russian weapons, the Ukrainian air force said. The Kinzhal flies at 10 times the speed of sound, making it hard to intercept.

City buildings shook from the blasts. An entire section of a residential multistorey building in one district of Kyiv was destroyed, officials said. Three electricity substations were damaged or completely destroyed in two districts of Kyiv, energy company DTEK said.

The head of Ukraine's presidential office, Andrii Yermak, said the attack occurred at a time when many people were in the city's streets.

U.S. President Joe Biden said that Moscow's deadly missile strikes in Ukraine, including on the children's hospital in Kyiv, were "a horrific reminder of Russia's brutality".

In a statement released by the White House, Biden added that Washington and its NATO allies would be announcing new measures to strengthen Ukraine's air defences.

Diplomats said the United Nations Security Council would meet on Tuesday at the request of Britain, France, Ecuador, Slovenia and the United States.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, deplored the attacks, saying: "Among the victims were Ukraine's sickest children."

Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces had launched strikes on defence industry targets and aviation bases.

Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, although its attacks have killed thousands of civilians since it launched its invasion in February 2022.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General said he discussed the attacks with International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan, adding that his office would be sharing evidence with the ICC.

Ukraine's Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said Ukraine still lacked enough air defences and urged Kyiv's allies to supply more systems promptly to protect cities from Russian attacks.

Air Force representative Colonel Yuri Ignat said it became more difficult to repel Russian attacks as Moscow's forces kept enhancing their bombardment tactics.

"Enemy missiles are equipped with additional means, including radar and thermal traps," Ignat wrote on Facebook.

The missiles flew at extremely low altitudes during Monday's attacks, he said.

DTEK, the largest private power producer, said three electricity substations and networks had been damaged in Kyiv.

The power system has already sustained so much damage from targeted Russian air strikes that began in March that electricity cuts have become widespread.