Tonight, the brutality of war in Ukraine reaches a new level of what the White House called a barbaric use of military force against innocent civilians. At least seventeen people were wounded after a Russian airstrike destroyed a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol. Ukraine’s President Z said there were children under wreckage and called the strike a war crime. Near the city of Kharkiv, a senior defense official tells CBSN that Russian forces have made moderate progress. And the capital of Kiev, thousands of civilians are making their way to safety while a top Ukrainian advisor said cease fire in many other regions are not holding. And new fears tonight of a possible radiological disaster at two nuclear facilities that are now under control of Russian forces.
A day that began in the hope of a limited cease fire ended in horror, a senior defense official says tonight that there are indications that the Russians are using dumb bombs unguided weapons increase civilian casualties and damage. A massive airstrike shattered the fragile cease fire in Mariupol this afternoon. Emergency team and soldiers scrambled to evacuate to wounded, including pregnant women from the city’s maternity hospital, a hospital for those who needing care, maybe the only place where they felt some measure of security, but it seems nothing is off limits to the Russian onslaught. The blast destroyed the complex inside and out, the shattered nursery of blood stain mattress. The size and the depth of crater in the surrounding debris and destruction, evidence of its ferocity. The besieged port city in the South has come under to bombardment that’s cut off electricity and water to more than four hundred thousand people. City officials say at least twelve hundred civilians have been killed since the war began.