Bombings hit hospitals in Mykolaiv, Ukraine

Hospitals came under fire overnight in the port city of Mykolaiv in the south of Ukraine, including a cancer treatment centre and an eye clinic, an AFP reporter said Saturday. 

The windows of the newly renovated cancer center, where patients receive chemotherapy, were smashed out. The impacts of the projectiles could be seen on the doors.

"They fired on civilian areas, without any military targets. Here there is a hospital, an orphanage, an ophthalmological centre," located in the Ingulski neighbourhood, north of the city, said Dmytro Lagotshev, head of the hospital. 

No patients or healthcare workers were in the cancer treatment centre at the time of the strikes, but there were an unspecified number of patients in the eye clinic, he said. 

"We spent the whole night in the basement, everything was shaking, the patients were terrified," said its director Kasimira Rilkova.

Residents of the Ingulski neighbourhood have no heat and many are now being forced to leave.

– TIMES/AFP