KYIV  –  A barrage of Russian missile strikes hit targets in cities across Ukraine, including a children’s hospital in Kyiv, killing at least 22 people and injuring 68 more, officials said. Ukrainian officials said the rare daytime aerial assault had struck Ukrainian cities during rush hour, including Kyiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

According to Ukraine’s general prosecutor, nine people had been killed in the capital, while 23 others had been injured. In Kryvyi Rih, 10 people had died and 37 more were hurt, according to local officials. Meanwhile, in the Donetsk region, at least three people had been killed, the head of Donetsk regional military administration Vadym Filashkin said.

Among the buildings hit was Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt hospital, Ukraine’s largest children’s medical center, which has been crucial in supporting some the sickest children from across the country. Every year, around 7,000 surgeries – including treatments for cancer and hematological diseases – are conducted at the hospital, according to Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.

Videos from the scene showed volunteers working with police and security services to sift through the rubble as smoke billowed from the hospital, as staff described how they tried to rush children to safety in the wake of the attack. Ukraine’s health minister Viktor Liashko said intensive care units, oncology departments and surgery units had been damaged.

“The key task here is to get people out of the rubble and provide assistance to those we can reach, as we have already taken out all the first ones,” he said in a Telegram post. Natalia Sardudinova, a senior nurse, described the moment the strike hit the hospital saying that “it was scary, but we survived.” “It was loud, the windows were crunching,” she told CNN. “As soon as the alarm sounded, the children were taken out into the corridor.” She said two children had been in the operating theaters at the time of the blast, and both were relocated to the basement shelter once their procedures were completed.

“Everything was in smoke, there was no air to breathe. The doctor was cut by shrapnel. The windows and doors were blown out. One nurse in the hospital was heavily injured,” Sardudinova added. “My hands are still shaking. They don’t let anyone in now, they are afraid it will collapse.” Yulia Vasylenko, the mother of an 11-year-old cancer patient at the hospital, said her son Denys was evacuated outside following the strike. “My son is on painkillers. He has cancer. He has been without medication for half a day. He was brought down the stairs from the third floor. There was smoke (and) heavy dust,” she said. (CNN)…[+]

PARIS –  Global temperatures were at record high levels in June for a 13th consecutive month, according to data by the European climate service Copernicus, which is raising the alarm over the warming climate. June also marked the 12th straight month that the world was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the pre-industrial era, Copernicus said in an announcement. It said global temperatures averaged 16.66C (62F) last month, which was 0.67 degrees Celsius above the 30-year average for the month.

It broke the record for the hottest June, set a year earlier, by 0.14 degrees Celsius. It was the third hottest month recorded by Copernicus since 1940, behind only last July and last August. “This is more than a statistical oddity and it highlights a continuing shift in our climate,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. Copernicus senior climate scientist Nicolas Julien said in an interview that it is “a stark warning” as it signals the globe is getting closer to the 1.5-degree limit most countries accepted as part of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Records have been “shattered by very substantial margins over the past 13 months”, he said. This, however, does not mean that the Paris accord has already failed because its 1.5-degree threshold is measured in averages reached over decades, not single months or years. But Julien said it has already translated into more “extreme climate events”, including worsening floods, storms, droughts and heatwaves. June’s heat hit hard in Southeast Europe, Turkey, eastern Canada, the western United States and Mexico, Brazil, northern Siberia, the Middle East, North Africa and western Antarctica, according to Copernicus.

The European Union’s flagship Earth observation programme said June was also the 15th straight month that the world’s oceans, more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, have broken heat records. To arrive at its conclusions, Copernicus uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world to track climate metrics and analyses them with computer simulations. Buontempo said the current record-breaking streak of extreme heat may end soon but new records are bound to be broken in the near future as the climate continues to warm. “This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans,” he said. (Al Jazeera)…[+]

ASSAM  –  More than 130 wild animals, including at least six rare rhinos, have died in flooding at a national park in north-eastern India, officials say. The Kaziranga National Park in Assam is experiencing its worst deluge in recent years. The dead animals – many of whom died by drowning – include 117 hog deer, two sambar deer, a rhesus macaque and an otter.

In 2017, more than 350 animals died due to floods in the park and vehicle collisions during migration through animal corridors to the highlands. Officials say they have rescued 97 animals from flood waters – 25 of them are receiving medical care while 52 others have been released after treatment. Kaziranga is home to the world’s largest population of one-horned rhinos, which were nearly extinct at the turn of the century. It’s a Unesco World Heritage site, with over 2,400 one-horned rhinos.

The park is also a tiger reserve and home to elephants, wild water buffalo and numerous bird species. The endangered South Asian dolphins are also found in the rivers that criss-cross the park. Last week, an 18-month-old rhino calf took shelter at a house in a village near the park and was rescued by the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation, the Press Trust of India reported.

Assam has been devastated by floods due to torrential rains, with major rivers in the state flowing above the danger level. This year’s rains have inundated large parts of the park and submerged thousands of villages. More than 60 people have been killed and over two million people displaced in the deluge. There has been extensive damage to roads and other infrastructure, as well as loss of crops and livestock.

Officials have warned of even more rain with water levels in the Brahmaputra river, which runs through the state, expected to increase in the coming days. Across Assam, hundreds of relief camps have been set up to shelter the displaced. Flooding and landslides are a common occurrence during the monsoon in north-eastern India and neighbouring countries. (BBC)…[+]