By Samantha Jones-
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said he plans to open an investigation into events in Ukraine.
War crimes refers to serious breaches of international humanitarian law committed against civilians or “enemy combatants” during an armed conflict.
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The destruction of a children’s hospital in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol will go down as a war crime. The deadly attack is against the Geneva Convention and legal experts from the West are gathering evidence against Putin’s regime for genocide against the people of Ukraine.
Rules during conflicts were agreed after the Second World War in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which were signed by all members of the UN – including Russia.
A list of war crimes set out by the Rome Statute of the ICC includes “intentionally directing attacks… against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities”.
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It also includes “attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives.
A child was among three people killed by a Russian bombing raid on a Ukrainian hospital, it emerged today, after President Zelensky condemned the strike as a war crime.
He said the Russians are “changing their tactics and so the Ukrainians need to too”, to help Ukraine forces tackle President Putin’s air force.
World leaders have reacted with outrage after a large bomb fired by a Russian jet hit the maternity and children’s ward of a hospital in the besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol, causing “colossal destruction”, according to the city council.
Seventeen people were also injured in the strike, which was reported to have left patients trapped under the rubble. Local officials confirmed there had been at least three fatalities, including a child, this morning, but did not give further details.
The bombing will go down as one of the tragedies of the Russian war with Ukraine. As efforts continue to evacuate civilians from areas worst hit by Russia’s almost two-week-old invasion.
Ukrainian’s president accused Russia of carrying out genocide, after officials said Russian aircraft bombed a children’s hospital on Wednesday, burying patients in rubble despite a ceasefire deal for people to flee the besieged city of Mariupol.
The attack, which authorities said injured women in labour and left children in the wreckage, is the latest grim incident of the 14-day invasion, the biggest assault on a European state since 1945.
The Mariupol city council said the hospital had been hit several times in what the White House called a “barbaric use of military force to go after innocent civilians”.
The destruction was a betrayal a Russian pledge to halt firing so at least some trapped civilians could escape the city, where hundreds of thousands have been sheltering without water or power for more than a week.
“What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, is afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a televised address late on Wednesday.
Zelenskiy repeated his call for the West to tighten sanctions on Russia “so that they sit down at the negotiating table and end this brutal war”. The bombing of the children’s hospital, he said, was “proof that a genocide of Ukrainians is taking place”.
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The U.N. Human Rights body is still in the process of verifying the number of casualties at Mariupol.
“The incident adds to our deep concerns about indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas and civilians trapped in active hostilities in numerous areas,” said spokesperson Liz Throssell.
Ukraine accused Russia of breaking the ceasefire around the southern port, which aid workers and officials say is running out of food and water after days of Russian bombardment.
“Indiscriminate shelling continues,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Satellite image company Maxar said images from earlier in the day showed extensive damage to homes, apartment buildings, grocery stores and shopping centres in the port city.
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday that more than 1 million children have fled the country since the invasion started on Feb 24. At least 37 had been killed and 50 injured, it said.
Around 48,000 Ukrainians have been evacuated through humanitarian corridors, Interfax Ukraine news agency said on Wednesday, citing a senior aide to Zelenskiy.
Wounded
The head of Ukraine’s Donetsk region said 17 people were wounded in the attack, including staff and mothers in the maternity ward. There were no immediate reports of injured children or deaths.
In the southeastern port city of Mariupol, meanwhile, workers began burying scores of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in a mass grave after days of bombardment.
United States officials warned that Russia could try to justify the invasion by launching a chemical or biological weapons attack — and blaming it on Ukraine.
The warning came after a Russian official said the country was preparing to use poisonous substances in the war, a claim White House press secretary Jen Psaki called “preposterous.”
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