The AP news agency reported this morning (Monday) that the pregnant woman documented in photos from last Wednesday died, being evacuated injured from the maternity hospital in Mariupol after a Russian shelling.
The woman was seen stroking her blood-soaked lower abdomen as rescue workers smuggled her through the rubble in the besieged Mariupol, her face reflecting her shock at what had just happened. This is one of the most brutally remembered images so far since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The woman was rushed to another hospital, but closer to the front line, where doctors worked to keep her alive. When she realized she was losing her baby, the doctors said, she shouted at them, “Kill me now!”.
Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman’s pelvis broken and her hip detached. Doctors gave birth to the baby by caesarean section, but he showed no “no signs of life,” the surgeon said.
Next, the surgeons focused on the mother. “More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother yielded no results,” the hospital said, “both died.”
In the chaos following the airstrike on Wednesday, paramedics did not have time to get the woman’s name before her husband and father arrived to pick up her body. At least someone came to pick her up, they said – so she was not buried in the mass graves dug for many of Mariupol’s growing death toll.
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