Medics carry a little girl on an IV drip after the Russian missile strike on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, 8 July 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/VLADYSLAV MUSIIENKO

Search and rescue operations at the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv were wound down on Tuesday afternoon, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko announced, a day after a Russian missile strike on the facility caused an international outcry.

Two people were killed in the attack on the hospital, and another 32 were injured, including eight children who required hospitalisation, Klymenko wrote.

The children’s hospital was one of multiple sites in Kyiv that were targeted in a series of Russian airstrikes, which killed at least 31 people in the Ukrainian capital.

During a briefing on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stressed that the Russian military exclusively attacked military targets, echoing a Russian Defence Ministry statement on Monday that claimed the strike on the children’s hospital had been caused by a “Ukrainian air defence missile launched from an anti-aircraft missile system within the city”.

As well as Kyiv, the massive Russian attack on Ukraine on Monday morning targeted the cities of Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Skadovsk, Pokrovsk, and Kramatorsk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on his official Telegram channel on Tuesday that in total 38 people had been killed in the attacks across Ukraine, among them four children, and that 190 people in total had been injured.