Pregnant woman wounded in Russian attack on hospital dies

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — An injured pregnant woman who was taken on a stretcher from a Ukrainian maternity hospital attacked by Russia last week has died, as has her baby, the Associated Press learned.

The photographs of the woman, whom the PA has not been able to identify, were seen all over the world, embodying the horror of an attack on civilians.

She was one of at least three pregnant women who were located by the PA after leaving the bombed maternity hospital on Wednesday in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The other two survived, as did their newborn daughters.

In videos and photos taken by PA journalists after the attack on the hospital, the woman was seen caressing her bloody belly while rescuers carried her into the rubble. His pale face reflected his shock at what had just happened.

It was one of the most brutal moments so far in Russia's 19 days of 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 she was losing her baby, the doctors said, she yelled “Kill me now!”

The woman's pelvis had been crushed and her hip was dislodged, Dr. Timur Marin said Saturday. The doctors removed the baby through a cesarean section, but he did not show “vital signs,” he said.

They tried to save the woman, but “more than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother did not work,” Marin said. “Both died.”

In the chaos that followed Wednesday's air strike, health workers did not have time to register the woman's name before her husband and father took the body. The doctors said they were grateful that it did not end up in the mass graves that have been dug for many of the dead in Mariupol.

Accused of attacking civilians, the Russian authorities claimed that Ukrainian extremists had taken 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 falsely branded the images as “fake news”.

Journalists from The Associated Press who have been reporting from inside the besieged 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 pregnant and bloody women fleeing the maternity ward, amidst cries of doctors and cries of children.

The PA team tracked down and found some of the victims on Friday and Saturday after they were transferred to another hospital on the outskirts of Mariupol. This port on the shores of the Sea of Azov has been without food, water, electricity or heating for a week. Electricity produced by emergency generators is reserved for surgery rooms.

The survivors described their odyssey between explosions in the background outside that shook the walls. Cannonings and firing in the area are sporadic but they do not stop. Doctors and nurses focus on their work, but emotions are on the surface.

Another pregnant woman, blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya, gave birth to a baby girl on Thursday. He put his arm around his newborn daughter Veronika as he explained to the PA what he remembered from Wednesday's attack.

After photos and videos showed her walking down the stairs dotted with rubble, dressed in pajamas and grabbing a blanket, the Russian authorities falsely claimed that she was an actress and the attack was a montage.

“It happened on March 9 at hospital number 3 in Mariupol. We were in the rooms when the windows, frames, windows and walls fell apart,” Vishegirskaya, who posts fashion and beauty on social media, told AP.

“We don't know how it happened. We were in our rooms and some had time to cover themselves, others didn't,” he said.

His hard experience was one of many that have been experienced in the city of 430,000 inhabitants, which has become a symbol of Russian President Vladimir Putin's resistance to war in Ukraine.

The failure to fully capture Mariupol has caused Russian soldiers to extend their offensive to other parts of Ukraine. The city is key to creating a land bridge from the Russian border to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow was annexed in 2014.

In a new makeshift maternity wing, each new birth brings more tension.

“All the mothers who have been giving birth have been through a lot,” said nurse Olga Vereshagina.

A third pregnant woman who was seen by the PA lost some toes in the attack. The doctors performed a cesarean section on Friday, carefully removed her daughter and rubbed the little girl with energy to stimulate her.

After a few seconds of breathlessness, the baby began to cry.

Shouts of joy echoed in the room amid the weeping of the little girl, who received the name Alana. His mother also cried and the medical workers wiped away their tears.