Ukrainian emergency employees carry an injured pregnant woman from the damaged maternity hospital in Mariupol. AP

At least three people were killed, including a young girl, in an attack the previous day on a children's hospital in Mariupol in southern Ukraine, local officials said on Thursday.

"Three people were killed, including a female child, in yesterday's attack on a children's and maternity hospital in Ukraine's besieged Mariupol, according to updated figures this morning," the city council said on its Telegram channel.

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Officials had previously given a toll of 17 injured in the attack.

In an earlier report, a Russian airstrike devastated a maternity hospital on Wednesday in the besieged port city of Mariupol and wounded at least 17 people, Ukrainian officials said, amid growing warnings from the West that Moscow’s invasion is about to take a more brutal and indiscriminate turn.

The ground shook more than a mile away when the Mariupol complex was hit by a series of blasts that blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to scene to evacuate victims, carrying out a heavily pregnant and bleeding woman on a stretcher.

A woman walks outside the damaged maternity hospital hit by Russia airstrike in Mariupol on Wednesday. AP

Another woman wailed as she clutched her child. In the courtyard, mangled cars burned, and a blast crater extended at least two stories deep.

"Today Russia committed a huge crime,” said Volodymir Nikulin, a top regional police official, standing in the wreckage. "It is a war crime without any justification.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Twitter that there were "people, children under the wreckage” and called the strike an "atrocity.” Video shared by Zelensky showed cheerfully painted hallways strewn with twisted metal.

"There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenseless," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be held "to account for his terrible crimes.”