MSTISLAV CHERNOV
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-maternity-hospital-pregnant-woman-dead-c0f2f859296f9f02be24fc9edfca1085
MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — An injured pregnant woman who was brought on a stretcher from a maternity hospital bombed by Russia last week died with her baby, the Associated Press reported.
Images of the woman, whom the AP was unable to identify, were seen around the world, depicting the horror of the attack on civilians.
She was one of at least three pregnant women found by AP in a bombed-out maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Wednesday. Two others survived along with their newborn daughters.
In videos and photos taken by AP journalists after the attack on the hospital, the injured woman stroked her bloodied lower left abdomen as rescuers carried her through the rubble, her pale face reflecting her shock at what had just happened.
It was one of the most brutal moments in Russia’s 19-day war in Ukraine.
The woman was taken to another hospital, closer to the front line, where doctors tried to save her. The doctors said that, realizing that she was losing a child, she yelled at them: “Kill me now!”
Dr. Timur Marin said on Saturday that the woman’s pelvis had been crushed and her thigh had been torn off. Her baby was delivered by caesarean section but “showed no signs of life,” he said.
They tried to save the woman, and “more than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother did not give any results,” Marin said. “Both are dead.”
In the chaos following the airstrike, medical workers did not recognize her name until her husband and father retrieved her body. The doctors said they were grateful to her for not ending up in the mass graves dug for many of the dead in Mariupol.
Russian officials accused of attacking civilians said the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists for use as a base and that no patients or medical personnel were left inside. The Russian Permanent Representative to the UN and the Russian Embassy in London falsely called the AP images fake.
Journalists from the Associated Press, who have been reporting from besieged Mariupol since the start of the war, documented the attack and saw the casualties and destruction with their own eyes. They filmed and photographed several bloodied pregnant mothers fleeing the blown-up maternity hospital to the screams of medical workers and the screams of children.
The AP team tracked down some of the victims on Friday and Saturday after they were transferred to another hospital on the outskirts of Mariupol. The port city on the Sea of Azov has not been supplied with food, water, electricity and heat for more than a week. Power from emergency generators is reserved for operating rooms.
As the survivors described their ordeal, explosions rocked the walls, causing medical workers to flinch. Shelling and gunfire in the area are sporadic but ongoing. Emotions ran high even as doctors and nurses focused on their jobs.
Another pregnant woman, Maryana Vyshegirskaya, gave birth to a girl on Thursday.
After AP photos and videos showed her descending a debris-strewn staircase in her polka-dot pajamas clutching a blanket, Russian officials falsely claimed she was an actor in a staged attack.
“It happened on March 9 in hospital No. 3 in Mariupol. We were lying in the wards when glass, frames, windows and walls shattered,” said Vishegirskaya, who blogged about fashion and beauty on social networks when she fled.
“We don’t know how it happened. We were in our wards, and someone managed to hide behind, someone did not, ”she said.
Her trial was one of many in the city of 430,000 that has become a symbol of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s resistance to Ukraine’s war.
The failure to completely capture Mariupol prompted Russian troops to expand their offensive in other parts of Ukraine. The city is key to building a land bridge from the Russian border to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
In a makeshift new maternity hospital in Mariupol, each new birth causes new tension.
“All women in labor have experienced so much,” said nurse Olga Vereshchagina.
A third pregnant woman seen by the AP lost several toes in the bombing and was given a C-section by medical professionals on Friday.
Her child was rubbed vigorously to stimulate any signs of life. After a few tense moments, the baby began to cry.
Applause resounded around the room amid the screams of a girl named Alana. Her mother was also crying, and the medical staff were wiping tears from her eyes.
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