A pregnant woman and her baby were killed after Russia bombed the maternity hospital where she was going to give birth, The Associated Press has learned.
The images of the woman transferred to an ambulance on a stretcher went around the world and symbolized the horror of an attack on the most innocent.
Videos and photos taken Wednesday by AP journalists after the hospital attack showed the woman stroking her bloody belly as rescuers carried her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol.
Pregnant woman injured in airstrike on maternity hospital in Mariupol on March 9 died along with her unborn child – VoA reporter Asya Dolina. This is her from her in the video. Russia is killing the living and the unborn. #GenocideOfUkrainians pic.twitter.com/X7H9ozc6II
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) March 14, 2022
His pale face reflected the shock of what had just happened. It was one of the most brutal moments so far in Russia’s 19-day war in Ukraine.
The woman was taken to another hospital even closer to the front, where doctors tried to save her life. When she realized that she was losing her baby, according to the doctors, she yelled at them “Kill me already!”
The woman’s pelvis had been crushed and her hip was dislocated, surgeon Timur Marin said. Doctors delivered the baby by cesarean section, but he showed no “vital signs,” he said.
So they focused on the mother. “More than 30 minutes of resuscitation on the mother was unsuccessful,” Marin said Saturday. “They both died.”
In the chaos following Wednesday’s airstrike, doctors had no time to record the woman’s name before her husband and father came to collect her body. At least someone came looking for her, they said, so she didn’t end up in one of the mass graves being dug for many of the dead in Mariupol.
Russian authorities, accused of war crimes, claimed that Ukrainian extremists had taken over the maternity hospital as a base and that there were no patients or doctors left in the building. The Russian ambassador to the United Nations and the Russian embassy in London called the images “fake news.”
Associated Press journalists reporting from the besieged city of Mariupol since the early days of the war documented the attack and saw firsthand the casualties and damage.
They took videos and photos of several bloody pregnant women fleeing the maternity ward, amid screams from doctors and cries from children.
The AP later found the victims on Friday and Saturday at the hospital to which they had been taken, outside Mariupol.
In a city that has gone more than a week without food, water, electricity or heating deliveries, power from emergency generators is reserved for operating rooms.
Survivors described their experience as the explosions outside shook the walls. The shelling and shooting in the area are sporadic but do not stop. Doctors and nurses are focused on their work, but emotions are running high.
A birth in the midst of horror
Blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya gave birth to a baby girl the day after the airstrike and had her arm around newborn Veronika as she recalled Wednesday’s attack.
The blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya also that. Photo: AP
Photos and videos showed her walking down rubble-strewn stairs, clutching a blanket around her pregnant body.
Vishegirskaya had also been in the middle of the accusations of the Russian authorities, who launched a campaign on social networks to install the idea that she was an actress and the attack was a set-up.
“It happened on March 9 at Hospital number 3 in Mariupol. We were in the rooms when the glass, the frames, the windows and the walls came crashing down,” she told AP Vishegirskaya, still dressed in the same polka dot pajamas she was when she fled.
“We don’t know how it happened. We were in our rooms and some had time to cover up, some didn’t.”
His ordeal was one of many in Mariupol, which has become a symbol of resistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to crush democratic Ukraine and redraw the world map in his favor.
The fact that Mariupol has not fallen has prompted Russian forces to expand their offensive elsewhere in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the port city of 430,000, along the Sea of Azov and key to creating a land connection from Russia to Russia-annexed Crimea, is slowly starving.
In a new makeshift maternity ward, each new delivery brings more stress.
“All mothers have been through a lot,” said nurse Olga Vereshagina.
One of the affected mothers lost some toes in the attack. Doctors performed a C-section on Friday, carefully removing her daughter from her and vigorously rubbing the little girl to stimulate her.
After a few seconds of breathlessness, the baby began to cry.
