The United Nations has described the Russian airstrike on Kiev that damaged a paediatric hospital as a war crime.
"Let me remind this council that hospitals have special protection under international humanitarian law," said Joyce Msuya, the acting head of the UN Emergency Relief and Works Agency (OCHA) at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York.
"Intentionally directing attacks against a protected hospital is a war crime and perpetrators must be held to account," she said.
The attacks were part of "a deeply concerning pattern of systemic attacks, harming healthcare and other civilian infrastructure across Ukraine", Msuya continued.
The missile strikes in Ukraine, which left dozens dead, caused horror on Monday. Kiev held Moscow responsible.
France and Ecuador then convened an emergency meeting of the most powerful UN body.
Because Russia has veto power in the UN Security Council, action over Russian aggression in Ukraine is out of the question.
At the same time, a NATO anniversary summit in Washington is to discuss how Ukraine can be better helped.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reiterated promises of further long-term support for Ukraine before leaving Berlin for the NATO gathering: "It is good that we have reinforced this once again in the last few days with a very clear message. We will stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes."
Devastating airstrikes on Kiev
The body of a missing boy was retrieved from the rubble of an apartment block in Kiev that was destroyed in a Russian missile attack, as many expressed outrage at the brutality of the strike.
At least 31 people died in devastating Russian airstrikes on Kiev on Monday, including four children, and 117 people were injured, the city's civil defence department said on Tuesday.
There were further casualties in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the south.
Across the country, Ukraine has suffered a total of at least 42 deaths and 190 injuries as a result of the recent attacks, President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on the social media platform X. "We continue to work to protect our cities and communities from Russian terror," he wrote.
Tuesday is set to be a day of mourning in Kiev, after a missile hit one of Ukraine's most important paediatric hospitals in the capital.
Hundreds of rescue workers and volunteers were still searching for people trapped in the rubble.
Children suffering from cancer who had been rescued were sitting on their mothers' laps in the street attached to drips.
Two adults were killed in the hospital, including a doctor.
Seven people were killed in a large residential building near the hospital, including three children. Two people died in an industrial plant. There were unofficial reports saying there had been attacks on an armaments company.
Nine people were killed in another partially destroyed hospital and seven people were killed in a business centre.
Evidence points to deliberate Russia attack
Ukraine has said the children's hospital attack was targeted as video footage shows what Ukrainian sources have identified as a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile approaching the building unhindered.
Preliminary investigations by the UN Human Rights Office have found that the children's hospital destroyed in Kiev was hit directly by a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, Danielle Bell, head of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said on Tuesday.
She said specialists had reached this conclusion after analysing video footage and directly examining damage on site.
"[It is] one of most egregious attacks we have seen since the onset of the invasion," she said.
Russia denies responsibility
However, the Russian military has said the impact was caused by the mistaken use of a Ukrainian air-defence missile, without providing evidence.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov demanded that the public stick to this version. "We do not carry out strikes against civilian targets. There are only strikes against objects of critical infrastructure or military targets," he said, according to the TASS news agency.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also claimed that the hospital had been hit by a NASAMS anti-aircraft missile from Ukraine.
Child patients transferred
The UN's Bell said that hospital staff brought young patients to safety in the bunker shortly before the attack on Monday, she said. Otherwise, the number of victims would have been significantly higher. She said two people died in the attack.
All 600 of the hospital's young patients had been transferred to other health facilities. The hospital, where many children with cancer and other serious illnesses were treated, was badly damaged and could no longer be used without extensive repairs, she said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) office in Kiev showed the situation on the ground on X.
The WHO has counted almost 1,900 attacks on hospitals, doctors' surgeries, ambulances and similar targets since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who was among a number of foreign leaders to describe the airstrike as a war crime, said that Germany will take in some of the sick Ukrainian children for further treatment.
Ukraine sends drones to attack Russia
Ukraine responded to the nationwide wave of attacks from Moscow with drone attacks on Russia on Tuesday.
A depot of tanks belonging to the oil company Lukoil in the Volgograd region was set on fire as a result. Regional Governor Andrey Bocharov blamed this on debris from drones that had been shot down, which had fallen on the depot in the city of Kalach on the Don.
The fire is being extinguished, he said. A transformer station had also been hit, he said.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said 38 Ukrainian combat drones had been intercepted during the night over the Belgorod, Kursk, Voronezh, Rostov and Astrakhan regions.
The information could not initially be independently verified - and the Volgograd region did not appear on the ministry's list. However, Russian authorities confirmed that aircraft were temporarily unable to take off or land at the airports in Volgograd and Astrakhan.
According to the Moscow military, further drones were shot down over the Belgorod and Astrakhan regions in the course of the morning.
As Kiev lacks heavy long-range weapons, it is trying to make up for this shortcoming with targeted drone attacks. The attacks on Russian refineries and petrol depots are intended to paralyse the supply of fuel for the army.
However, the damage caused in Russia is nowhere close to the scale of the devastating consequences of Russian bombardments on Ukraine.
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