‘You would think it’s a safe place’: A nurse recounts an attack on a Mariupol hospital.

When a Russian missile strike hit a maternity hospital within the Ukrainian port metropolis of Mariupol early final month, Elena Karas, a nurse, was on the third flooring caring for 13 untimely infants, two of whom had been deserted.

With Mariupol’s electrical energy, water and gasoline largely minimize off, the hospital was chilly, having solely a generator within the supply room. Ms. Karas was utilizing plastic bottles stuffed with sizzling water to maintain the infants heat, and was watching a mom altering a diaper when the missile hit, throwing the nurse to the bottom and wounding her brow with a shard of glass.

“Every part turned white, as if flour coated all of the surfaces,” Ms. Karas, 57, stated in a phone interview from northern Italy, to which she has fled. “Every part was destroyed in a single second.”

The brutality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has now turn out to be obvious, with proof of atrocities in opposition to civilians mounting. However the assault at Metropolis Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol was among the many first surprising indicators that Ukraine was dealing with a cruel warfare. {A photograph} of a pregnant lady who was killed within the strike turned an iconic picture of the warfare’s toll.

“I didn’t ever suppose they might bomb our hospital.” Ms. Karas stated. “Not a hospital. You’d suppose it’s a protected place.”

Even earlier than the assault, the dire circumstances within the hospital had led to the demise of a untimely child who couldn’t be correctly given oxygen or stored sufficiently heat. After the strike, Russia’s international minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, instructed reporters that the hospital had been seized days earlier than by “ultraradical” Ukrainian forces and emptied of the docs and sufferers.

Ms. Karas stated she was one in all six medical staff in her ward who had continued to work regardless of the risks of commuting within the besieged metropolis, the place officers say that hundreds of individuals have been killed and that 90 % of town’s infrastructure is destroyed.

Every day, she walked alongside a road the place lifeless our bodies lay, she stated, amid the sounds of artillery and bombing.

“I used to be scared, actually scared,” she stated, “However I needed to go — that was my job. If I didn’t go, who would deal with the kids?”

Working made her really feel good, she stated, and he or she felt safer within the hospital. She additionally felt extra helpful than she would have staying dwelling. “What might I do there?” she stated. “Sit, trembling in worry?”

After the strike, the sufferers and staff, a few of whom had been wounded, had been taken to a navy hospital, Ms. Karas stated. She went dwelling, the place for 10 days, she stated, she and her household melted snow to drink water and struggled to mild a fireplace with damp wooden because the destruction unfolded round them.

On March 18, she and her daughter-in-law discovered area in two vehicles of individuals leaving Mariupol.

“Both you keep within the metropolis otherwise you survive,” she stated.

Ms. Karas and her grandchildren made it to Italy on April 1, and her husband fled Mariupol on March 31, however their son and daughter stayed to struggle. Ms. Karas has taken a brief job serving to an older lady close to the northern metropolis of Verona.

“I must do one thing,” she stated. “I’m going loopy with out work from home.”

Ms. Karas left a house with damaged home windows and no door, and he or she stated she didn’t know whether or not her constructing was nonetheless standing.

“In my head, it doesn’t compute that there’s nowhere to return to, to return to a desert,” she stated. “Each individual wants a spot to return to.”

Valeriya Safronova contributed reporting.