Pregnant woman, baby die after Russia bombs hospital

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — A pregnant lady and her child have died after Russia bombed the maternity hospital the place she was meant to provide beginning, The Related Press has discovered. Photos of the lady being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomizing the horror of an assault on humanity’s most harmless.

In video and images shot Wednesday by AP journalists after the assault on the hospital, the lady was seen stroking her bloodied decrease stomach as rescuers rushed her by means of the rubble within the besieged metropolis of Mariupol, her blanched face mirroring her shock at what had simply occurred. It was among the many most brutal moments to date in Russia’s now 19-day-old conflict on Ukraine.

The girl was rushed to a different hospital, but nearer to the frontline, the place medical doctors labored to maintain her alive. Realizing she was shedding her child, medics mentioned, she cried out to them, “Kill me now!”

Surgeon Timur Marin discovered the lady’s pelvis crushed and hip indifferent. Medics delivered the infant through cesarean part, however it confirmed “no indicators of life,” the surgeon mentioned.

Then, they targeted on the mom.

“Greater than half-hour of resuscitation of the mom didn’t produce outcomes,” Marin mentioned Saturday.

“Each died.”

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Within the chaos after Wednesday’s airstrike, medics didn’t have time to get the lady’s identify earlier than her husband and father got here to remove her physique. No less than somebody got here to retrieve her, they mentioned — so she didn’t find yourself within the mass graves being dug for a lot of of Mariupol’s rising variety of lifeless.

Accused of conflict crimes, Russian officers claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to make use of as a base, and that no sufferers or medics had been left inside. Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. and the Russian Embassy in London referred to as the photographs “faux information.”

Related Press journalists, who’ve been reporting from inside blockaded Mariupol since early within the conflict, documented the assault and noticed the victims and injury firsthand. They shot video and images of a number of bloodstained, pregnant moms fleeing the blown-out maternity ward, medics shouting, kids crying.

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The AP group then tracked down the victims on Friday and Saturday within the hospital the place they’d been transferred, on the outskirts of Mariupol.

In a metropolis that’s been with out meals provides, water, energy, or warmth for greater than every week, electrical energy from emergency mills is reserved for working rooms.

As survivors described their ordeal, explosions exterior shook the partitions. The shelling and taking pictures within the space is sporadic however relentless. Feelings are operating excessive, at the same time as medical doctors and nurses focus on their work.

Blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya gave beginning to a woman the day after the airstrike and wrapped her arm round new child Veronika as she recounted Wednesday’s bombing. After images and video confirmed her navigating down debris-strewn stairs and clutching a blanket round her pregnant body, Russian officers claimed she was an actor in a staged assault.

“It occurred on March 9 in Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol. We had been laying in wards when glasses, frames, home windows and partitions flew aside,” Vishegirskaya, nonetheless sporting the identical polka dot pajamas as when she fled, informed The AP.

“We don’t know the way it occurred. We had been in our wards and a few had time to cowl themselves, some didn’t.”

Her ordeal was one amongst many in Mariupol, which has change into a logo of resistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to crush democratic Ukraine and redraw the world map in his favor. The failure to subordinate Mariupol has pushed Russian forces to broaden their offensive elsewhere in Ukraine.

In the meantime, the Azov Sea port metropolis of 430,000, key to making a land bridge from Russia to Russian-annexed Crimea, is slowly ravenous.

Within the makeshift new maternity ward, every approaching childbirth brings new pressure.

“All birthing moms have lived by means of a lot,” mentioned nurse Olga Vereshagina.

One of many distraught moms misplaced a few of her toes within the bombing. Medics carried out a C-section on her Friday, rigorously pulling out her daughter and rubbing the new child vigorously to stimulate indicators of life.

After just a few breathless seconds, the infant cries.

Cheers of pleasure resonate by means of the room. New child Alana cries, her mom cries, and medical employees wipe the tears from their eyes.