MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) – A pregnant woman and her baby have died after Russia bombed the maternity hospital where she was due to give birth, The Associated Press has reported. Images of the woman rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had traveled the world, embodying the horror of an attack on the most innocent of humanity.
Video and photos taken Wednesday by AP journalists after the attack on the hospital showed the woman stroking her bloodied abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol. † It was one of the most brutal moments yet in Russia’s now 19-day-old war against Ukraine.
The woman was rushed to another hospital, yet closer to the front lines, where doctors were scrambling to keep her alive. When she realized she was losing her baby, medics said, yelling at them, “Kill me now!”
Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman’s pelvis crushed and the hip loose. Doctors delivered the baby by cesarean section, but it showed “no signs of life,” the surgeon said.
Then they turned to the mother.
“More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother had no effect,” Marin said on Saturday.
“Both died.”
In the chaos after Wednesday’s airstrike, medics didn’t have time to get the woman’s name before her husband and father came to remove her body. At least someone came to pick her up, they said — so she didn’t end up in the mass graves being dug for many of Mariupol’s growing death toll.
Charged with war crimes, Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and no patients or medics were left inside. The Russian ambassador to the UN and the Russian embassy in London called the images “fake news”.
Associated Press journalists, who have been reporting from inside the blockaded Mariupol since the war began, documented the attack and saw the casualties and damage firsthand. They made videos and photos of several bloodstained pregnant mothers fleeing the bloated maternity ward, medics screaming, children crying.
The AP team then located the victims Friday and Saturday at the hospital where they had been transferred, on the outskirts of Mariupol.
In a city that has been without food, water, power or heat for more than a week, electricity from emergency generators has been reserved for operating rooms.
As survivors described their ordeal, explosions shook outside the walls. The shelling and shelling in the area is sporadic but relentless. Emotions run high, even as doctors and nurses focus on their work.
Blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya gave birth to a girl the day after the airstrike and put her arm around the newborn Veronika as she talked about Wednesday’s bombing. After photos and videos showed her navigating rubble-strewn stairs and clutching a blanket around her pregnant body, Russian officials claimed she was an actor in a staged attack.
“It happened on March 9 at Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol. We were in wards when glasses, frames, windows and walls flew apart,” Vishegirskaya, still in the same polka dot pajamas as when she fled, told The AP.
“We don’t know how it happened. We were in our wards and some had time to cover up, some didn’t.”
Her ordeal was one of many in Mariupol, which has become a symbol of resistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aspiration to crush democratic Ukraine and redraw the world map in his favor. The failure to subordinate Mariupol has prompted Russian forces to expand their offensive elsewhere in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the 430,000-population port city of Azov is starving, key to creating a land bridge from Russia to Russia-annexed Crimea.
In the makeshift new maternity ward, each approaching delivery brings new tension with it.
“All mothers in birth have been through so much,” says nurse Olga Vereshagina.
One of the distraught mothers lost some of her toes in the bombing. Doctors performed a cesarean section on Friday, gently pulling her daughter out and rubbing the newborn vigorously to encourage signs of life.
After a few breathless seconds, the baby cries.
Cheers echo through the room. Newborn Alana cries, her mother cries and medical personnel wipe the tears from their eyes.
†
Follow the AP’s coverage of the crisis in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
