Ukraine claims Russia has bombed psychiatric hospital with 330 people inside

All staff and patients were reportedly in a basement bomb shelter at the time of the attack and there were no casualties

A woman walks by apartment building damaged after shelling the day before in Ukraine's second-biggest city of Kharkiv. (AFP via Getty Images)

Russian forces have hit a psychiatric hospital with 330 people inside in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Ukrainian authorities have claimed.

Oleh Synegybov, governor of the region, said that 73 people had been evacuated from the hospital, which is near the eastern Ukrainian town of Izyum, and described it as a “brutal attack on civilians.”

Ukraine’s state emergency service said there were no casualties, adding: “All 30 staff and 330 patients were in a bomb shelter at the time of the strike.”

Mr Synegybov said the attack as “a war crime against civilians, genocide against the Ukrainian nation”. He said that some people inside the hospital had been confined to wheelchairs and were unable to move.

The governor also said that Russian forces had shelled residential areas of Kharkiv, the main city in the region, 89 times in one day.

Ukraine’s ministry of information posted about the attack saying: “The Russian military fired on the Oskilsky psychoneurological facility in the Kharkiv region.

“At the time of the shelling, there were 330 people in the building, including 50 patients with reduced mobility and 10 wheelchair users, head of the military administration reports.”

The Independent has not been able to verify the report.

The mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, said on Friday that 48 schools had been destroyed in the city.