Listening to the wail of air-raid sirens, a mother and her 9-year-old daughter raced through the Ukrainian capital’s early morning darkness on Thursday to a clinic, where a bomb shelter promised escape from another Russian missile barrage.

But the clinic was locked, the authorities said. After explosions roared, the woman and her daughter were found dead among green trees and broken glass, just outside the door. So was another woman.

“People were knocking, knocking for a very long time,” the husband of the third victim, who gave his name as Yaroslav, told Ukraine’s public broadcaster. “There were women and children and nobody opened it.”

The authorities, who announced an investigation into why the shelter in the capital, Kyiv, was inaccessible, did not name those who died. They described the girl, her mother, 34, and the other woman, 33, as the latest casualties of Russia’s punishing and relentless campaign on civilians.