Girl shot dead by Russian troops among at least 16 kids killed in Ukraine invasion

Polina, believed to have been nine or ten years old, was in her final year of primary school. She was killed along with her mother and father when Russian troops opened fire on their family car, according to Kyiv’s local authority.

Her sister is in intensive care and her brother is being treated at a children’s hospital after the attack in the northwest of the capital, the city’s deputy mayor Volodymyr Bondarenko said.

Five days into Russia’s invasion, at least 16 children have been killed and another 45 wounded, president Volodymyr Zelensky says.

At least 352 civilians have been killed, Ukraine’s health ministry said on Sunday. Exact death tolls are unclear and it is believed many more are dead or wounded. Millions of people have fled their homes.

This morning, dozens of civilians were killed and hundreds more injured in Russian rocket strikes on the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said.

On Friday, a seven-year-old girl was killed in an attack on a pre-school. Alisa Hlans was among six people who died while taking shelter in the nursery in the town of Okhtyrka, northeastern Ukraine.

Amnesty International said the Russian military used widely-banned cluster munitions in the attack.

“It is stomach-turning,” Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said. “This should be investigated as a war crime.”

In the southeastern city of Mariupol, doctors were filmed desperately trying to revive a six-year-old girl wounded in Russian shelling.

She was brought to hospital in bloodied unicorn-patterned pyjamas. A medic pumping oxygen looked directly into a video camera.

“Show this to Putin,” he said. “The eyes of this child, and crying doctors.”

Their attempt to resuscitate the girl failed.

According to Amnesty, Russia has been launching indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including strikes on hospitals.

The human rights organisation said Russia has violated international humanitarian law and may have committed war crimes in its invasion of Ukraine showing “a blatant disregard for civilian lives”.