(Kyiv) Le bombardement par la Russie mercredi d’un hôpital pédiatrique dans le port stratégique de Marioupol en Ukraine représente un « crime de guerre », a estimé le président ukrainien Volodymyr Zelensky dans un message vidéo.
Publié à 12h01
Mis à jour à 18h28
« Aujourd’hui est le jour qui définit tout. Qui est de quel côté. Des bombes russes sont tombées sur un hôpital et sur une maternité à Marioupol […] Buildings are destroyed. At this point there are 17 injured. The debris is being excavated,” he said.
PHOTO EVGENIY MALOLETKA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
An injured pregnant woman is evacuated by a team of rescuers.
“What kind of country, Russia, is afraid of hospitals and maternities and destroys them? “, he quipped, denouncing the “atrocities” inflicted on Mariupol, subjected to a Russian blockade for more than a week.
“Europeans! Ukrainians! People of Mariupol! Today we must unite in condemning this war crime by Russia, which reflects all the harm the invaders have done to our country,” Zelensky added.
« Le bombardement aérien est la preuve finale. La preuve qu’un génocide d’Ukrainiens est en train de se produire […] We have never and never would have committed a war crime like this in the cities of Donetsk or Lugansk or any region,” he said referring to two towns in eastern Ukraine held by the pro-Russian separatists.
The president once again called on Western leaders to show “courage” to “finally do what they should have done on the first day of the invasion.” Either close the air skies to Russian missiles and bombs, or give us fighter jets so we can do it all ourselves.”
PHOTO NATIONAL POLICE OF UKRAINE, REUTERS
Several charred cars and a huge crater bear witness to Wednesday’s airstrike in Mariupol.
The bombing of the Mariupol hospital on Wednesday sparked outrage from UNICEF and several Western countries, with the White House denouncing the “barbaric” use of force against civilians.
In Moscow, the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy Maria Zakharova for her part affirmed during a press briefing that Ukrainian “nationalist battalions” had removed patients and staff from the hospital to use it as a base for shots.
PHOTO VADIM GHIRDA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A van with “Children” written on it drives past a destroyed Russian tank in Mariupol.
“Today my heart is full of anger. It is very difficult to choose the words to describe what happened to my beloved city today,” said Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boitchenko, appearing very moved in a video on Telegram.
“I’m sure the day will come when all these occupants will be sitting in the box at (the international court in) The Hague. And this war crime will be punished and those who committed it will burn in hell,” he added.
According to Mariupol City Hall, the nine-day Russian siege on the city left 1,207 civilians killed.
“Nine days of continuous bombardment of the civilian population. Nine days, half a million people living without electricity, water, heating or communications. Nine days that the city is cut off from the outside world. Nine days — 1207 Mariupol civilians killed,” the town hall writes in a short text on its Telegram channel.
PHOTO EVGENIY MALOLETKA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bodies are placed in a mass grave in Mariupol.
Questioned by AFP, the Ukrainian presidency confirmed this information: “We do not have the exact figure, but the provisional figure is correct”, she indicated.
Some 300,000 civilians have been pinned down for days by fighting in the strategic port of Mariupol, in the south-east of the country, on the Sea of Azov, deprived of water, food and electricity and where aid humanitarian could not happen.