Dozens of Russ­ian mis­siles blast­ed cities across Ukraine on Mon­day, strik­ing apart­ment build­ings and a large chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal in the cap­i­tal, where lo­cal res­i­dents joined emer­gency crews to search through piles of rub­ble. At least 31 peo­ple were killed, of­fi­cials said.

The day­time bar­rage tar­get­ed five Ukrain­ian cities with more than 40 mis­siles of dif­fer­ent types, Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy said on so­cial me­dia. Ukraine’s air force said it in­ter­cept­ed 30 mis­siles. More than 150 peo­ple were wound­ed.

It was Rus­sia’s heav­i­est bom­bard­ment of Kyiv in al­most four months, hit­ting sev­en of the city’s 10 dis­tricts. Sev­en peo­ple were killed in the cap­i­tal, in­clud­ing two staff mem­bers at the hos­pi­tal, where three chil­dren were hurt. Strikes in Kryvyi Rih, Ze­len­skyy’s birth­place in cen­tral Ukraine, killed 10.

“It is very im­por­tant that the world should not be silent about it now and that every­one should see what Rus­sia is and what it is do­ing,” Ze­len­skyy said on so­cial me­dia.

Rus­sia de­nied at­tack­ing the hos­pi­tal and said the strikes hit mil­i­tary tar­gets.

The at­tack un­fold­ed a day be­fore West­ern lead­ers who have backed Ukraine were sched­uled to be­gin a three-day NA­TO sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton to con­sid­er how they can re­as­sure Kyiv of the al­liance’s un­wa­ver­ing sup­port and of­fer Ukraini­ans hope that their coun­try can sur­vive Eu­rope’s biggest con­flict since World War II.

Ze­len­skyy said dur­ing a vis­it to Poland that he hopes the sum­mit will pro­vide more air de­fence sys­tems for Ukraine.

At the Okhmat­dyt Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal in Kyiv, res­cuers searched for vic­tims un­der the rub­ble of a par­tial­ly col­lapsed, two-sto­ry wing of the fa­cil­i­ty.

At the hos­pi­tal’s main 10-sto­ry build­ing, win­dows and doors were blown out, and walls were black­ened. Blood was spat­tered on the floor in one room. The in­ten­sive care unit, op­er­at­ing the­atres and on­col­o­gy de­part­ments all were dam­aged, of­fi­cials said.

At the time of the strike, three heart op­er­a­tions were be­ing per­formed, and de­bris from the ex­plo­sion con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the pa­tients’ open chests, Health Min­is­ter Vik­tor Liashko said.

The hos­pi­tal lost wa­ter, light and oxy­gen in the at­tack, and the pa­tients were trans­ferred to oth­er hos­pi­tals, he told Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion.

Res­cuers formed a line, pass­ing bricks and oth­er de­bris to each oth­er as they sift­ed through rub­ble. Smoke rose from the build­ing, and vol­un­teers and emer­gency crews worked in pro­tec­tive masks.

Some moth­ers car­ried their chil­dren away on their backs, while oth­ers wait­ed in the court­yard with their chil­dren as calls to doc­tors’ phones rang unan­swered.

A few hours af­ter the ini­tial strike, an­oth­er air raid siren sent many of them hur­ry­ing to the hos­pi­tal’s shel­ter. Led by a flash­light through the shel­ter’s dark cor­ri­dors, moth­ers car­ried their ban­daged chil­dren in their arms, and med­ical work­ers car­ried oth­er pa­tients on gur­neys. Vol­un­teers hand­ed out can­dy to try to calm the chil­dren.

Ma­ri­na Ploskonos said her 4-year-old son had spinal surgery Fri­day.

“My child is ter­ri­fied,” she said. “This shouldn’t be hap­pen­ing, it’s a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal,” she said, burst­ing in­to tears.

“Among the vic­tims were Ukraine’s sick­est chil­dren,” Volk­er Türk, the U.N. hu­man rights com­mis­sion­er, said adding that a U.N. team vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tal short­ly af­ter it was hit and saw chil­dren re­ceiv­ing treat­ment for can­cer in hos­pi­tal beds set up in parks and on streets.

“This is abom­inable, and I im­plore those with in­flu­ence to do every­thing in their pow­er to en­sure these at­tacks stop im­me­di­ate­ly,” Türk said.

Kyiv city ad­min­is­tra­tors de­clared Ju­ly 9 a day of mourn­ing, when en­ter­tain­ment events are pro­hib­it­ed and flags are low­ered.

Ukraine’s Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice said it found wreck­age from a Russ­ian Kh-101 cruise mis­sile at the site and opened pro­ceed­ings on war crime charges. The Kh-101 is an air-launched mis­sile that flies low to avoid de­tec­tion by radar. Ukraine said it shot down 11 of 13 Kh-101 mis­siles launched Mon­day.

U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res called Mon­day’s mis­sile strikes “par­tic­u­lar­ly shock­ing,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Du­jar­ric said.

The U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil sched­uled an emer­gency meet­ing on the at­tacks for Tues­day at the re­quest of France and Ecuador. Rus­sia, which holds the coun­cil’s ro­tat­ing pres­i­den­cy this month, will pre­side at the meet­ing.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court’s found­ing char­ter says it is a war crime to in­ten­tion­al­ly at­tack “hos­pi­tals and places where the sick and wound­ed are col­lect­ed, pro­vid­ed they are not mil­i­tary ob­jec­tives.”

Late last month, the court is­sued ar­rest war­rants for Rus­sia’s for­mer de­fence min­is­ter and its mil­i­tary chief of staff for at­tack­ing Ukraine’s elec­tric­i­ty net­work.

Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry said the strikes tar­get­ed Ukrain­ian de­fence plants and mil­i­tary air bases and were suc­cess­ful. It de­nied aim­ing at any civil­ian fa­cil­i­ties and claimed with­out ev­i­dence that pic­tures from Kyiv in­di­cat­ed the dam­age was caused by a Ukrain­ian air de­fence mis­sile.

Since ear­ly in the war which is well in­to its third year, Russ­ian of­fi­cials have reg­u­lar­ly claimed that Moscow’s forces nev­er at­tack civil­ian in­fra­struc­ture in Ukraine, de­spite abun­dant ev­i­dence to the con­trary, in­clud­ing As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­port­ing.

More than 1,600 med­ical fa­cil­i­ties have been dam­aged since the start of the war and 214 have been ru­ined com­plete­ly, ac­cord­ing to Ukrain­ian Health Min­istry sta­tis­tics pub­lished last month.

Col. Yurii Ig­nat of the Ukrain­ian Air Force said Rus­sia has been im­prov­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of its airstrikes, equip­ping its mis­siles with en­hance­ments, in­clud­ing so-called heat traps that evade air de­fence sys­tems.

In Mon­day’s at­tack, the cruise mis­siles flew as low as 50 me­ters (160 feet) off the ground, mak­ing them hard­er to hit, he said in com­ments sent to AP.

About three hours af­ter the first strikes, more mis­siles hit Kyiv and par­tial­ly de­stroyed a pri­vate med­ical cen­tre. Four peo­ple were killed there, Ukraine’s Emer­gency Ser­vice said.

In the cap­i­tal’s Shevchenkivskyi dis­trict, a three-sto­ry sec­tion of a res­i­den­tial build­ing was de­stroyed. Emer­gency crews searched for ca­su­al­ties, and AP re­porters saw them re­move three bod­ies.

The pow­er­ful blast wave scorched near­by build­ings, shat­tered win­dows and flung a dog in­to a neigh­bour­ing yard, res­i­dent Hali­na Sichiev­ka said.

“Now we don’t have any­thing in our apart­ment, no win­dows, no doors, noth­ing. Noth­ing at all,” the 28-year-old said.

Some of the weapons used in the at­tack, Ukraine’s air force said, were Kinzhal hy­per­son­ic mis­siles, which are among the most ad­vanced Russ­ian weapons. They fly at 10 times the speed of sound, mak­ing them hard to in­ter­cept.

City build­ings shook from the blasts. Three elec­tric­i­ty sub­sta­tions were dam­aged or de­stroyed in two dis­tricts of Kyiv, en­er­gy com­pa­ny DTEK said.

Samya Kul­lab in Kyiv con­tributed to this re­port.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) —