The main children’s hospital in Kyiv was struck in a Russian missile barrage, which killed at least 20 people across Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces fired more than 40 long-range munitions, including the hypersonic Kinzhal, at different cities in a rare daytime raid.

Rescue workers were dispatched to Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital amid reports that children were trapped in the wreckage of the building.

Parents holding bloodied babies, crying and dazed, were photographed trying to escape the carnage after the strike.

Young patients could be seen receiving treatment on the street as local authorities promised the missile attack would not disrupt services at the hospital.

Footage shows a medical worker in blood-stained scrubs joining the rescue effort as emergency services and volunteers passed individual bricks along a line in a scramble to free people trapped under the rubble.

The hospital’s roof has caved in and there are plumes of thick, black smoke rising from what appeared to be the impact zone.

Children hooked up to IV drips and their parents, some wearing face masks, were seen waiting patiently in a queue of seats next to the hospital, as officials said patients would be moved away from the damaged facility.

Emergency workers were met with blood-lined floors, doors and windows blown off their hinges and hospital beds and equipment scattered as they looked for survivors.

A woman was pictured carrying a young child, wrapped in a sheet, being carried out of the hospital. The child was bleeding from its forehead, nose, neck and arms.

The blue-tinted windows on the outside of the hospital were blown from their frames and piles of rubble was strewn on the floor as part of the building collapsed.

Patients at the hospital were being evacuated to nearby facilities in the city, Serhii Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said, as another raid siren was sounded over the capital.

“The hospital has been damaged by a Russian strike, people are under the rubble, the exact number of wounded and dead is currently unknown. Now everyone helps to sort out the debris: doctors, ordinary people,” Mr Zelensky wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“Russia cannot help but know where its missiles are flying, and must fully answer for all its crimes: against people, against children, against humanity in general.”

“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,” the Ukrainian president added.

The attack has already generated international condemnation with the British government labelling the attack “appalling” while Paris said it was “barbaric”. 

The long-range barrage on Ukraine came as Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, met Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, to discuss a potential peace deal to end the war. Mr Orban has also visited Mr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin in recent days.

Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, said the attack was one of the heaviest on the capital since the target of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Local authorities reported that debris of Russian missiles intercepted by Ukrainian air defence systems rained down on six neighbourhoods in the Ukrainian capital, damaging residential blocks and offices.

There were at least seven confirmed deaths and 25 people wounded in the strikes on Kyiv, according to city authorities.

In Kryviy Rih, central Ukraine, at least 10 people were killed and 31 others injured, Oleksandr Vilkul, the city’s mayor, said.

Three more people died in Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine, when missiles struck an industrial facility.

The cities of Dnipro and Kramatarosk were also targeted.

Suella Braverman’s prospective Conservative leadership campaign has been dealt a blow after a key ally abandoned her. 

The former home secretary has seen the campaign organiser from her Autumn 2022 leadership bid switch allegiance to Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, who is also widely expected to throw his hat into the ring to replace Rishi Sunak.

Danny Kruger, co-chair of the New Conservatives, a right-wing grouping of MPs, is understood to be now backing Mr Jenrick, who quit his Cabinet post over the refusal by Rishi Sunak to take a tougher approach to immigration.

Both Mrs Braverman and Mr Jenrick pushed Mr Sunak to block any appeals against Rwanda deportation on human rights grounds, have called for the UK to quit the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and proposed a cap on net migration, which was finally accepted for the Tories’ election manifesto.

However, Mrs Braverman has faced criticism from some MPs for her attacks on the campaign’s blunders before the polls closed and is the only prospective candidate to have suggested an accommodation with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.

“These interventions have made her so unpopular that it’s not going to work. There’s a lot of affection for Suella but some of the things she has done showed a lack of judgement. It’s a pity,” said a senior Tory.

“Private polling is clear. It basically says that party members want the policies of Nigel Farage and the presentation of [Lord] David Cameron.”

Mrs Braverman and Mr Jenrick as well as former health secretary Victoria Atkins all took to the airwaves on Sunday to present their assessment of the Tory defeat – although all refused to say whether they would be standing.

Kemi Badenoch, the former business and trade secretary, is seen as a frontrunner with Priti Patel, another former home secretary, and Tom Tugendhat, the former security minister, also said to be considering pitching for the leadership.

On Sunday, speaking to GB News’s Camilla Tominey, Mrs Braverman said that parts of the Tory party still wanted “more of the same”, but she warned: “We’ve all got to be searingly honest, it’s going to be uncomfortable for some people, or we don’t have any hope of fixing it.”

She said she was having “lots of conversations with colleagues” surrounding a potential leadership bid. “I’m very flattered and very encouraged by what people are saying to me. But this is a really difficult time for our party, there are lots of things to think about,” she added. “We need to agree on the diagnosis of the problem before we reach a resolution on the prescription.”

Mr Jenrick said that migration was “at the heart” of the loss of trust in the Conservatives, citing the number of votes the party had lost to Reform UK.

Echoing the words of Ms Braverman, he said: “I’ve been a member of this party since 1997 when I was 16 years of age. I’ve been with it through thick and thin. I want to ensure that it has the right diagnosis of what’s gone wrong, and that diagnosis is not about personalities. It’s about principles and ideas.”

One Tory said one of the two should stand aside as it would be a mistake for both to challenge for the leadership. “Robert has appeal to the right because of his stance on migration but has an urbanity that also appeals to the centre of the party,” they said.

Ms Atkins, who is from the One Nation centre-left grouping in the party, appeared to pitch herself as a unity candidate. She said that the Tories must talk as a “unified party” and insisted that the public was still “instinctively Conservative”, wanting lower taxes and to “thrive in their personal lives and their livelihoods”.

Supporters of Ms Patel also portrayed her as a unity candidate, in being from the Right of the party but having drawn support from those from the centre and left in the form David Gauke and George Osborne.

Toni Kroos said he believes Germany’s influx of migrants was “too uncontrolled” and that the country has changed considerably in the 10 years since he left.

The Germany and Real Madrid star, who returned to his home country for the Euros this summer, said he welcomed migrants but concluded that Germany was not successful in managing mass immigration.

In an interview recorded before his country lost to Spain on Friday, he compared the two countries and agreed with his interviewers that there was a feeling of “loss of control” in Germany.

When pressed by a conservative-leaning podcast, he replied: “I believe that this control over certain issues has simply slipped away a little over the years and there’s a reason for that. In my opinion, the reason is that people have overwhelmed them.”

He said that it was “great” how Germany had greeted migrants with open arms, before adding that “it was just too uncontrolled”.

He added: “I think we didn’t manage it, this basically very positive approach that I support 1000 per cent, because I find that sensational, that people come to us from the outside and then are happy.”

He said he thought the impact of migration was “underestimated”, and was “in the end something too uncontrolled”.

“Clearly when many people come, there is always a percentage who do not do us good, just as there is among Germans,” he said, adding that German attitudes to migration have become divided.

Germany has been split on the topic since Angela Merkel’s decision to allow a million refugees to enter Germany in 2015 with the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) entering the German Parliament in the aftermath.

Olaf Scholz’s “traffic light” coalition passed reforms allowing dual citizenship but the AfD rose to new heights, recently coming second in the European elections.

Kroos’s comments come after his former Real Madrid teammate Kylian Mbappé urged the French to reject “extremists” and vote against Marine Le Pen’s far-Right National Rally in legislative elections. Le Pen hit back at Mbappé for being “too wealthy” to represent French migrants.

Earlier in the interview, before the issue of migration was raised, Kroos said he would be staying in Spain after retiring from Real Madrid, in part because he didn’t feel his home country was safe enough for his daughter.

‘Daughter not safe in Germany’

He said he felt that Germany had become less secure since he left, and was now concerned his child would not come back “unharmed” from a night out alone.

Kroos told the Lanz & Precht podcast: “I think Germany is a great country and I’m happy to be here, but it’s not really the same country that it was 10 years ago when we left.”

The central midfielder said that when his seven-year-old daughter gets older, he would rather she goes out in a Spanish city at 11pm than a German one.

He added that if he moved back to Germany he would be concerned about his daughter coming home from a night out, a feeling that he “wouldn’t have had that 10 years ago”.

Jeremy Clarkson offered almost £1 million to the owner of a pub within minutes of meeting her.

The former Top Gear presenter, 64, has been developing his Cotswold smallholding for the popular Amazon series Clarkson’s Farm.

Keen to find a pub to sell his produce, Clarkson arranged to meet with the landlady of The Windmill near Burford in Oxfordshire, and is said to have offered her a vast sum over a coffee.

The pub is nestled deep in the Cotswold countryside and boasts of views across the Windrush Valley, as well as being just 10 miles from the presenter’s Diddly Squat Farm.

Set on five acres of its own land, the presenter hopes to transform the venue into a pub that will only serve British produce, and offer farmers a free pint.

Publican Jackie Walker, 79, had been invited to Diddly Squat to discuss the terms of a potential deal for The Windmill.

She told MailOnline: “A film crew had come into the pub and the next thing I knew someone with Clarkson knocked on the door and asked if I was interested in selling.”

Mrs Walker, who opened the rural pub with her late husband Alan in 1983, visited Clarkson’s home near the village of Chadlington to discuss terms over a coffee.

She said: “The first thing Jeremy said to me was I suppose you want a lot of money for this.”

It has been reported that almost £1 million was offered almost immediately, and Mrs Walker accepted. Clarkson has secured the freedom of the pub, which is not affiliated with a brewery, meaning he can sell his own beer on site.

Mrs Walker said: “It did make me laugh, but that is Jeremy Clarkson.” She said she had not been planning to sell the place, but wasn’t that happy with how it was being run, adding “I am not getting any younger.”

“I assume he will make a TV series out of it. I really do hope that he can make a big success of the place and restore it back to how it was. My husband and I had so much fun running it.”

Clarkson has been seeking a pub as a venue to market his own products, including his Hawkstone ale.

Renovation work on The Windmill, which Clarkson described as “full of dead rats” with lavatories that are “illegal”, has begun.

Mrs Walker, who stepped back from the day-to-day running of the pub when her husband died 11 years ago and allowed leaseholders to step in, said she hopes Clarkson can make the pub as successful as it was in its early days, when it was popular with locals and tourists.

She said the pub was often “packed” in its early days and known for good food.

Anglo-Saxons will be played by a diverse cast in a new BBC historical drama about the Battle of Hastings.

The eight-part series King and Conqueror will tell the story of Harold and William’s epoch-defining struggle for the throne of England in 1066.

Some Anglo-Saxon characters, including a real 11th-century leader, will be played by a diverse set of actors.

Jason Forbes and Elander Moore have joined the cast of the drama which boasts James Norton and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in starring roles.

Adding diversity to a high medieval period setting follows the BBC’s “colour-blind” casting of non-white stars as Tudor courtiers in another upcoming historical drama, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.

King and Conqueror is a CBS Studios co-production series acquired by the BBC.

When announced in 2023, CBS Studios executive Lindsey Martin said the scripts would offer “a bold and fresh take on a story that has endured for nearly 1,000 years”.

The BBC said at the time that the series would bring “Harold and William to life” with details of their personal lives, adding: “In the UK we learn about William the Conqueror, the Battle of Hastings and King Harold’s gruesome death in our school history lessons – but those headlines are all most of us can remember.”

The cast includes Norton as Harold Godwinson and Game of Thrones star Coster-Waldau as William, Duke of Normandy, alongside co-stars Juliet Stevenson and Clemence Poesy.

Without any official announcement, further details have emerged of greater diversity in the cast, with up-and-coming talents Forbes and Moore chosen for the roles of Anglo-Saxons.

Forbes will play the fictional character Thane Thomas, with the “thanes” being a layer of nobility in the ethnically homogeneous society of Anglo-Saxon England.

Moore, of Trinidadian descent, will play the real historical figure of Morcar, an Earl of Northumbria who fought against Viking and Norman invaders, before being subdued by William after the battle of Hastings.

Morcar, whose parents were Anglo-Saxon nobles, later rebelled against William’s rule. The colour-blind approach has drawn criticism, with historian and sometime BBC collaborator Dr Zareer Masani saying: “Some of us, including people of colour, grew up thinking actors ought to look like characters they played.”

He warned that going against this approach could be “hugely confusing and downright misleading” adding that it was “absolutely crazy that they’ve applied this colour-blindness to a period when Britain was at its least multicultural, before even the Norman Conquest”.

Cambridge historian Prof David Abulafia, referencing the recent decision of the Anglo-Saxon England journal to scrap its name, said: “ Since the whole series will undoubtedly bear little relation to historical fact, I think we shall have to put up with the bizarre notion that there were black earls in Anglo-Saxon England.

“All the more so, since we are no longer supposed to talk about ‘Anglo-Saxons’. If they didn’t exist, we can do what we like.”

Several period series have chosen to disregard realistic depictions of historical demographics to facilitate a diverse cast.

Bridgerton, based on a series of romantic novels, has cast non-white stars for the roles of multiple Regency-era nobles, and Queen Charlotte.

It emerged in April 2024 that the follow-up series to the acclaimed Wolf Hall would employ a diverse cast to portray courtiers in 16th-century England, including the portrayal of white historical figures.

Lady Margery Seymour, the mother of Jane Seymour, would be played by Sarah Priddy, a British actress of Bahamian descent. Seymour’s sister-in-law Anne would be played by Cecilia Appiah, a British mixed-race actress, and Thomas Wyatt, the Tudor courtier and poet who introduced the sonnet to England, by Amir El-Masry, an Egyptian-British actor.

The BBC and CBS Studios have been contacted for comment.