Ukrainian pregnant woman, baby die after Russian air strike on maternity hospital: ‘Kill me now’

Each the Ukrainian pregnant girl seen in a viral photograph being carried out on a stretcher after Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol and her child have died, in keeping with a report. 

The Related Press captured pictures and video of the publicly unidentified girl – mendacity on a stretcher beneath a watermelon patterned blanket with an empty look on her face whereas clutching her decrease stomach – as rescuers carried her by means of the rubble. 

Timber have been destroyed and particles strewn on the bottom. Behind them, home windows have been blown out on the badly broken façade of the hospital in a picture that shocked the world and exemplified to Western officers the horrors of Russia’s aggression towards civilians.  

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The girl was rushed to a different hospital, but nearer to the frontline, the place docs 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 by way of cesarean part, nevertheless it confirmed “no indicators of life,” the surgeon informed the AP. 

Then, they centered on the mom.

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

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, in keeping with the AP.

At the very least 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 useless. 

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. Diplomatic negotiations have didn’t safe humanitarian corridors for Mariupol’s some 400,000 civilians to flee closely shelling by the Russians. Theft has change into widespread and pictures have proven useless our bodies strewn throughout metropolis blocks. 

Accused of struggle 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 have been left inside. Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. and the Russian Embassy in London referred to as the photographs “pretend information.”

UKRAINIAN WOMAN WHO SURVIVED BOMBING GIVES BIRTH TO BABY GIRL 

AP journalists, who’ve been reporting from inside blockaded Mariupol since early within the struggle, documented the assault and mentioned they noticed the victims and injury firsthand. 

They shot video and pictures of a number of bloodstained, pregnant moms fleeing the blown-out maternity ward, medics shouting, and kids crying. The AP staff then tracked down the victims on Friday and Saturday within the hospital the place that they had been transferred, on the outskirts of Mariupol.

The AP reported final week {that a} totally different pregnant girl – see in viral pictures with a bloodied face fleeing the broken maternity hospital down a flight of stairs in a polka dot pajama set, carrying a blanket and several other luggage – had survived and delivered a child woman. 

After the bombing, the lady, recognized as Mariana Vishegirskaya, was taken to a different hospital on the outskirts of town, going through the entrance line, and gave delivery by way of cesarean to child Veronika Thursday. 

On Friday, her husband, Yuri, lovingly held up his daughter, then she was tucked again subsequent to her mom, in keeping with pictures and accounts from AP journalists. 

“It occurred on March 9 in Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol. We have been laying in wards when glasses, frames, home windows and partitions flew aside,” Vishegirskaya, nonetheless carrying the identical polka dot pajamas as when she fled, informed The AP. “We don’t know the way it occurred. We have been in our wards and a few had time to cowl themselves, some didn’t.”

The Twitter account for the Russian Embassy in London claimed she was not a sufferer, however a magnificence blogger and mannequin who was posing as two totally different pregnant ladies, in keeping with the AP. 

Whereas Vishegirskaya is a Ukrainian blogger in Mariupol who posts about skincare, make-up and cosmetics, there is no such thing as a proof that she was something however a affected person on the hospital. She has posted a number of pictures and movies on Instagram documenting her being pregnant previously few months, and in a single, she may be seen carrying the identical polka-dot pajamas as on Wednesday.

Twitter has since eliminated the Russian Embassy’s tweets, and current hyperlinks are directed to a discover that claims the posts violated Twitter’s guidelines.

The Related Press contributed to this report.