There are reports that Russian forces have taken patients and medical staff of a hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol as hostages.
According to the BBC, Mariupol’s deputy mayor Sergei Orlov said:
We received information that the Russian army captured our biggest hospital… and they’re using our patients and doctors like hostages.
We can confirm this information and also the governor of Donetsk region has confirmed this confirmation. We received information that there are 400 people there.
⚡️Donetsk Oblast Governor: Russia takes patients, medical staff hostage in Mariupol.
Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko says Russian troops entered a hospital on the outskirts of Mariupol.
“Russians drove 400 people from neighbouring houses to the hospital and they can’t leave,” he said.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 15, 2022
Nearly a hundred children have died in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a virtual address to Canadian lawmakers.
He said:
They destroying everything: memorial complexes, schools, hospitals, housing complex. They already killed 97 Ukrainian children.
We are not asking for much. We are asking for justice, for real support.
The besieged city of Mariupol was “left without heat or hydro, without means of communicating, almost without food, without water”, Zelenskiy added.
The Ukrainian leader has sought to drum up support for Ukraine with video briefings of foreign audiences that have included the European and British parliaments. He is due to address the US Congress tomorrow.
