Russia struck cities across Ukraine on Monday with a missile barrage that killed 31 people and heavily damaged a Kyiv children’s hospital in an assault condemned as a ruthless attack on civilians.
Dozens of volunteers, doctors and rescue workers were digging through debris of a part of Okhmatdyt paediatric hospital in a desperate search for survivors after the rare day-time bombardment, AFP journalists on the scene saw.
The first responders ran for cover when sirens and a explosion sounded after the initial strikes — a repeat attack that left four dead at a maternity hospital in a separate district of Kyiv, emergency services said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces fired more than 40 missiles toward at least five major civilian hub, mainly in the south and east of the country, as well as the capital.
Zelensky arrived in Poland as news of the strikes broke to sign a security deal with Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw, where the leaders held of minute of silence for the victims.
The Ukrainian leader in Warsaw called on allies to deliver “a stronger response to the blow that Russia has once again delivered on our population, on our land and on our children.”
The UN condemned the wave of strikes saying it was “unconscionable that children are killed and injured in this war,” while the EU’s Josep Borrell slammed Russia for “ruthlessly” targeting civilians.
France condemned the attacks, with the foreign ministry calling the bombardment of a children’s hospital in Kyiv “barbaric”.
Kyiv said the children’s hospital had been struck by a Russian cruise missile and claimed that it contained components produced in NATO member countries.
Russia however claimed the extensive missile damage in Kyiv was in fact caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile.
Moscow said its forces had struck their “intended targets”, which it added were only defence industry and military installations.
Natalia Svidler, 40, was in the hospital at the time of the strike with her two-year-old son, who was due to have surgery this week, when the air raid sirens sounded.
“The nurses told us to go down to the basement. After a while we heard a loud rumble and then the ceiling in the basement collapsed a little,” she said at the scene.
“Everyone got very scared, of course. Everyone started screaming and running,” she told AFP.
Officials in Kyiv said the attack had also damaged several residential buildings and an office block in Kyiv where AFP reporters saw cars on fire and shredded trees in charred courtyards.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said three electrical substations had been destroyed or damaged in Kyiv in the attack — the latest in series of strikes that have halved the country’s energy generation capacity in recent months, compared to one year ago.
Zelensky said that there were an unknown number of people trapped under the rubble of the children’s hospital. An AFP reporter saw one body at the scene, covered with a blanket.
Emergency officials said 20 people had been killed in the barrage that hit Kyiv and another 38 were wounded.
Russian forces have repeatedly targeted the capital with massive barrages since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the last major attack on Kyiv with drones and missiles was last month.
In Zelensky’s hometown Kryvyi Rig, which has been repeatedly targed by Russian bombardment, the strikes killed at least 10 and wounded over 41, officials there said.
In Dnipro, a city of around one million people in the same region, one person was killed and six more were wounded, the region’s governor said, when a high rise residential building and petrol station were hit.
And in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces have taken a string of villages in recent weeks, the regional governor said three people were killed in Pokrovsk — a town that had a pre-war population of around 60,000 people.
“This shelling targeted civilians, hit infrastructure, and the whole world should see today the consequences of terror, which can only be responded to by force,” the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, wrote on social media.
Zelensky and other officials in Kyiv have been urging Ukraine’s allies to send more air defence systems, including Patriots, to the war-battered country to help fend off deadly Russian aerial bombardment.
“Russia cannot claim ignorance of where its missiles are flying and must be held fully accountable for all its crimes,” Zelensky said in another post on social media.
AFP
US President Donald Trump says he is “not a big fan” of Pope Leo XIV, after the global leader of Catholics made a plea for peace amid the war in the Middle East.
The 70-year-old American pope publicly implored leaders on Saturday to end the violence, telling worshippers at St Peter’s Basilica: “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!”
“I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
He accused the pontiff of “toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon.”
Trump later doubled down on his comments to reporters with a post on Truth Social, saying: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” he said.
The president added that Leo had only been elected “because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”
“If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
Trump later posted an AI-generated image seemingly depicting himself as Jesus Christ.
In the image, the president appears dressed in red and white robes as he cures a man with his healing hand. The American flag is shown over his shoulder.
Trump and the White House have previously shared AI-generated images, including one that showed the president dressed as the pope.
On Friday, a Vatican official denied reports that a top Pentagon official gave the church’s envoy to the United States a “bitter lecture” over Pope Leo’s criticisms of the Trump administration.
The story in the Free Press — which the Pentagon had already dismissed as “distorted” — reported that Cardinal Christophe Pierre was summoned in January to the Pentagon, where he was given a dressing-down by US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby.
The military official reportedly told the cardinal that the United States “has the military power to do whatever it wants — and that the Church had better take its side.”
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement “the account presented by certain media outlets regarding this meeting does not correspond to the truth in any way.”
While both parties insist the meeting was cordial, the Holy See and the White House have openly been at odds over the Trump administration’s hardline mass deportation campaign — which the pope called “inhuman” — and the use of military force in the Middle East and Venezuela.
When Trump made genocidal threats against Iran Tuesday — saying “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” — the pontiff slammed the “truly unacceptable” statement and urged parties to “come back to the table” for negotiations.
Earlier this month, Pope Leo hailed the news of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran as a “sign of real hope.”
But peace talks between the United States and Iran, held in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, ended abruptly and without a resolution on Saturday, with US Vice President JD Vance telling reporters after a marathon-session of talks that Washington has delivered its “final and best offer.”
Pep Guardiola has explained the reason for Manchester City’s resurgence as they push for the Premier League title.
The win lifts City to 64 points from 31 games, cutting the deficit to leaders Arsenal—who have 70 points from 32 matches—to just six points, ramping up the title race in the closing stages of the campaign.
Asked why Manchester City have been in such fine form in the final stages of the season, Pep Guardiola joked: “The sun! If it had been shining in November, we’d have been league champions by January… No, I’m joking, of course. In Manchester, the sun doesn’t shine very often.”
Looking ahead to next Sunday’s 32nd-round clash with Arsenal in the Premier League, he added: “That game will feel like a final for both teams, but there is a tactical detail we need to review, so we may make some adjustments.
“Everyone is talking about the Arsenal game, but matches against Brentford, Bournemouth and the other sides are just as important. The season is still long.”
Guardiola added “We’re in better shape, and in training everyone knows exactly what they have to do. We’ve faced three strong opponents, three Champions League teams. We didn’t put in a complete performance for the full 90 minutes, but we were organised enough, didn’t concede many chances, and our attacking threat was always there.”
Pep Guardiola
He added:One of our secrets as a club and a system is that, after one success after another, we have remained humble and have always asked ourselves: what must we do to stay at the top? Winning once or twice is normal, but to remain at the top for nine years—with the exception of last season—reflects the strength of the entire system.”
Their dramatic grand finale fast approaching, Artemis II’s astronauts aimed for a splashdown in the Pacific on Friday to close out humanity’s first voyage to the moon in more than half a century.
The tension in Mission Control mounted as the miles melted away between the four returning astronauts and Earth.
All eyes were on the capsule’s life-protecting heat shield that has to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry. On the only other test flight of the spacecraft — in 2022, with no one on board — the shield’s charred exterior came back looking as pockmarked as the moon.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen were on track to hit the atmosphere traveling Mach 32 — or 32 times the speed of sound — a blistering blur not seen since NASA’s Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s.
They didn’t plan on taking manual control except in an emergency. Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, is completely self-flying.
Like so many others, lead flight director Jeff Radigan anticipated feeling some of that “irrational fear that is human nature,” especially during the six minutes of communication blackout preceding the opening of the parachutes. The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha awaited the crew’s arrival, along with a squadron of military planes and helicopters.
The last time NASA and the Defense Department teamed up for a lunar crew’s reentry was Apollo 17 in 1972. Artemis II was projected to come screaming back at 34,965 feet (10,657 meters) per second — or 23,840 mph (38,367 kph) — not a record but still mind-bogglingly fast before slowing to a 19 mph (30 kph) splashdown.
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Launched from Florida on April 1, the astronauts racked up one win after another as they deftly navigated NASA’s long-awaited lunar comeback, the first major step in establishing a sustainable moon base.
Artemis II didn’t land on the moon or even orbit it. But it broke Apollo 13’s distance record, making Wiseman and his crew the farthest that humans have ever journeyed from Earth when they reached 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers). Then, in the mission’s most heart-tugging scene, the teary astronauts asked permission to name a pair of craters after their moonship and Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll.
During the record-breaking flyby, they documented scenes of the lunar far side never seen before by the naked eye and savored a total solar eclipse courtesy of the cosmos thanks to their launch date. The eclipse, in particular, “just blew all of us away,” Glover said.
Their sense of wonder and love awed everyone, as did their breathtaking pictures of the moon and Earth. The Artemis II crew channeled Apollo 8’s first lunar explorers with Earthset, showing our blue marble setting behind the gray moon. It was reminiscent of Apollo 8’s famous Earthrise shot from 1968.
“It just makes you want to continue to go back,” Radigan said on the eve of splashdown. “It’s the first of many trips, and we just need to continue on because there’s so much” more to learn about the moon.
Their moonshot drew global attention as well as star power, earning props from President Donald Trump; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney; Britain’s King Charles III; Ryan Gosling, star of the latest space flick “Project Hail Mary;” Scarlett Johansson of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; and even Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner of TV’s original “Star Trek.”
Despite its rich scientific yield, the nearly 10-day flight was not without technical issues. Both the capsule’s drinking water and propellant systems were hit with valve problems. In perhaps the most high-profile predicament, toilet trouble prevented the crew from using it for No. 1 most of the trip, forcing them to resort to old-time bags and funnels.
The astronauts shrugged it all off.
“We can’t explore deeper unless we are doing a few things that are inconvenient,” Koch said, “unless we’re making a few sacrifices, unless we’re taking a few risks, and those things are all worth it.”
Added Hansen: “You do a lot of testing on the ground, but your final test is when you get this hardware to space, and it’s a doozy.”
Under the revamped Artemis program, next year’s Artemis III will see astronauts practice docking their capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will attempt to land a crew of two near the moon’s south pole in 2028.
The Artemis II crew’s allegiance was to those next Artemis crews, Wiseman said.
“But we really hoped in our soul is that we could for just for a moment have the world pause and remember that this is a beautiful planet and a very special place in our universe, and we should all cherish what we have been gifted,” he said.
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