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There has been a lot of bad news about a pregnant woman and her baby who died after Russia bombed the maternity hospital where she was going to give birth. Images of the woman being taken to an ambulance on a stretcher have been seen all over the world. They show the horror of the attack.
When a bomb hit a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine on Wednesday, a woman was seen touching her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed to help her.
In another hospital, doctors worked hard to keep her alive. She was taken there. Medics say that when she realised that she was going to lose her baby, she told them: “Kill me now.”
When Timur Marin, a doctor, looked at the woman, he found that her pelvis had been crushed and her hip had come off. It was born by caesarean section, but it didn’t show signs of life, Marin said. Then they paid attention to the mother.
Marin said that more than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn’t work. “Both have died.”
This happened after the attack, but the woman’s husband and father came to take her body away. The medics didn’t have time to get her name before that happened. At least someone came to get her, they said, so that she didn’t end up in one of the mass graves that are being made for many of the people who died in Mariupol.
Vladimir Putin’s government said the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and there were no patients or medics left inside. Those images were called “fake news” by both Russia’s UN ambassador and its embassy in London.
It was Friday and Saturday, and Associated Press journalists went to a hospital outside of the city of Mariupol to find the people who had died.
Power from emergency generators is only used to power operating rooms in cities that have been cut off for more than a week. Food, water, and power have not been available for more than a week.
Explosions outside shook the walls as the survivors talked about what happened. A lot of shelling and shooting is happening in this area, but it’s not very often.
She gave birth to a girl the day after the bombing. She put her arm around Veronika as she talked about the bombing. The Russian government said that after photos and videos showed her walking down debris-strewn stairs with a blanket in her hand, she was part of a fake attack.