Kyiv, Ukraine, July 9 (HBTV): Moscow launched a brazen daytime aerial assault on targets in cities across Ukraine during morning rush hour, killing at least 37 people and injuring 170 others including those from a children’s hospital, updates on Tuesday said. The number of casualties at press time was stated at 41.   

Ukraine is observing a day of mourning after dozens of missiles fired by Russia struck a number of cities across the country. 

One of the 38 missiles fired by Vladimir Putin’s forces hit the Okhmatdyt hospital, which was treating children in the oncology department among others in the deadliest attack the war-hit nation has seen in months. 

More than 100 buildings were damaged, including the children’s hospital and a maternity centre in Kyiv, children’s nurseries and a business centre and homes, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said. 

“The Russian terrorists must answer for this,” the president said.     

Ukraine’s central cities of Kryvyi Rih and Dnipro and two eastern cities were also hit, Ukraine’s interior ministry said.      

Vladimir Putin’s latest attack amounts to a war crime, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said, calling for condemnation from the entire international community.  

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said his nation would take revenge for the strikes, which his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, described as “genocide”.  

Rescuers searched for victims under the rubble of a partially collapsed, two-story wing of the facility, at the hospital that was hit by a missile. The intensive care unit, operating theaters and oncology departments all were damaged, officials said. At the main 10-story building, windows and doors were blown out, and walls were blackened.