Foreign
Children’s hospital attacked as Russian strikes on Ukraine kill at least 31
A barrage of Russian missile strikes hit targets in cities across Ukraine on Monday, including a children’s hospital in Kyiv, killing at least 31 people and injuring hundreds more, government officials said.
Ukrainian officials said the rare daytime aerial assault had struck Ukrainian cities during rush hour, including Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
According to Ukraine’s general prosecutor, nine people had been k!lled in the capital, while 23 others had been injured. In Kryvyi Rih, 10 people had d!ed and 37 more were hurt, according to local officials.
Among the buildings hit was Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt Hospital, Ukraine’s largest children’s medical centre.
Every year, around 7,000 surgeries including treatments for cancer and hematological diseases are conducted at the hospital, according to Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.
Videos from the scene showed volunteers working with police and security services sift the rubble as smoke billowed from the hospital, while staff described how they tried to rush children to safety in the wake of the attack. Ukraine’s health minister Viktor Liashko said intensive care units, oncology departments and surgery units had been damaged.
“The key task here is to get people out of the rubble and provide assistance to those we can reach, as we have already taken out all the first ones,” he said in a Telegram post.
Natalia Sardudinova, a senior nurse, described the moment the strike hit the hospital saying that “it was scary, but we survived.”
“It was loud, the windows were crunching,” she told CNN. “As soon as the alarm sounded, the children were taken out into the corridor.”
She said two children had been in the operating theatres at the time of the blast
.
“Everything was in smoke, there was no air to breathe. The doctor was cut by shrapnel. The windows and doors were blown out. One nurse in the hospital was heavily injured,”
Sardudinova added. “My hands are still shaking. They don’t let anyone in now, they are afraid it will collapse.”
Yulia Vasylenko, the mother of an 11-year-old cancer patient at the hospital, said her son Denys was evacuated outside following the strike.
“My son is on painkillers. He has cancer. He has been without medication for half a day. He was brought down the stairs from the third floor. There was smoke (and) heavy dust,” she said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy said in a post on X that the exact number of casualties at the hospital was not yet known and that “there are people under the rubble” but that everyone from doctors to local residents are helping clear debris in the strike’s aftermath.
“Apartment buildings, infrastructure, and a children’s hospital have been damaged. All services are engaged to rescue as many people as possible,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X.
He also said that around 40 missiles of various types had been launched against Ukraine.
“The entire world must use all its determination to finally put an end to the Russian strikes. Killing is what Putin brings. Only together can we bring real peace and security,” he added.
Several European nations denounced the attacks with France calling it “barbaric” while the United Kingdom’s new prime minister Keir Starmer said attacking innocent children was “the most depraved of actions.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday, at the White House, offered to extend Elon Musk’s advisory role within his administration.
The 53-year-old tech billionaire attended the first Cabinet meeting since President Trump marked his first 100 days in office.
In what resembled a farewell message, Musk said the American people “voted for secure borders, safe cities, and sensible spending, and that’s what they’ve gotten.”
Musk observed that “a tremendous amount” had been accomplished in the first 100 days—more, he claimed, than any previous administration.
He stated that this achievement “portends very well for what will happen for the rest of the administration,” and opined that it could be the “greatest administration” in America’s history.
Musk, a senior presidential adviser who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, confirmed that $160 billion had been saved since January.
The Tesla CEO, however, expressed concern about the attacks on his company, adding: “They do like to burn my cars, which is not great.”
In response, President Trump thanked Musk for his contributions, noting that he has “sacrificed a lot” and has also been “treated unfairly.”
Trump added that the vast majority of people respect and appreciate Musk for opening “a lot of eyes to what could be done.”
“We just want to thank you very much, and you are invited to stay as long as you want,” the President added.
Musk reportedly no longer operates from the West Wing, but his DOGE team continues to work from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building within the White House complex.
Foreign ministers of military-ruled Sahel states of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger said on Monday they endorse an initiative offering them access to global trade through Morocco’s Atlantic ports, Reuters reported.
The foreign ministers expressed their countries’ position during a meeting with Morocco’s King Mohammed VI in Rabat, it said.
The West African nations, run by military leaders who took power in coups in recent years, withdrew from the regional grouping ECOWAS last year and formed an alliance known as the Confederation of Sahel States (AES).
Morocco, a major investor in West Africa’s financial and agricultural sectors, announced its trade access initiative in November 2023, after ECOWAS imposed trade restrictions on the three states.
The initiative is conducive to “diversifying our access to the sea,” Mali’s foreign minister Abdoulaye Diop told state media.
The meeting “is part of the strong and longstanding relations of the Kingdom with the three brotherly countries of the Alliance of Sahel States,” Morocco’s news agency said.
The visit takes place as relations between the AES and Algeria, Morocco’s regional rival, deteriorate.
Algeria has cut ties with Morocco and backs the Polisario Front which seeks an independent state in Western Sahara, a territory Morocco considers its own and where it is building a port worth $1 billion.
The new AES grouping expelled French and other Western forces and turned towards Russia for military support.
In December, Morocco mediated the release of four French spies held in Burkina Faso, five months after Paris recognised Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.
A massive power outage paralyzed Spain and Portugal on Monday in an incident with no immediate explanation.
“It’s best to not speculate. We will know the causes soon. We are not discarding any hypothesis, but right now, we just focus on what’s most important: returning electricity to our homes,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said at a news conference Monday.
The stoppage, which occurred about 12:30 p.m. Madrid time, caused chaos across the Iberian Peninsula and showed the vulnerability of Europe’s electrical grid — even on days without extreme weather or spiking demand.
Trains stopped running. Hospitals canceled surgeries, according to news agencies, and depended on backup generators. Business ground to a halt as machines were unable to process credit card transactions. The outage even suspended several Madrid Open tennis matches, with photos showing a court with nonfunctioning scoreboards and darkened stands. Sánchez urged citizens to restrict cellphone use and to call emergency dispatchers only “when it is really necessary.”
By about 5:30 p.m. Madrid time, Red Eléctrica, the corporation that operates Spain’s electricity grid, said some power had been restored across corners of the peninsula, including parts of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Andalusia. About two hours later, the utility provider said more than a fifth of the peninsula’s power had been recovered. Full recovery may take up to 10 hours, Red Eléctrica told Spanish news outlets, which means the country’s power could be restored some time late Monday.
“Causes are being analyzed, and all resources are being dedicated to addressing the issue,” Red Eléctrica said in a statement.
More than 50 million people live on the Iberian Peninsula, but authorities did not provide an immediate estimate for the number of people affected by the outage. Portugal’s national grid operator described it as a “massive cut” in electricity supply across the peninsula. Data from Red Eléctrica showed a sudden plunge in electricity demand from about 27,000 megawatts to less than 13,000. Levels remained abnormally low two hours later.
Spain’s Energy Ministry said in a statement that Sara Aagesen, a deputy prime minister, visited the Red Eléctrica control center to “learn about the situation firsthand and monitor the incident.”
“All necessary measures will be put in place to restore normality as quickly as possible,” the statement said.
Prime Minister Sánchez also held a meeting at the control center, with Aagesen and several other ministers present, the Spanish newspaper El País reported, and Spain’s National Security Council called a meeting to address the outage.
Portugal’s Lusa News Agency said the country’s cybersecurity center had seen no evidence so far that the blackout stemmed from a cyberattack. Separately, the Reuters news agency quoted unnamed officials as saying a cyberattack had not been ruled out.
The Spanish grid also connects with Morocco, France, Andorra and Portugal. Spain and France experienced a major blackout on July 24, 2021, but it lasted less than an hour.
Previous power outages in Europe have been caused by technical problems, lightning strikes and damaged cables. In 2003, Italy faced a huge blackout because a tree was too close to a power line, resulting in a flashover, or a jump of electricity from the line to vegetation.
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