Ukraine invasion: Pregnant woman in viral video dies with baby
A wounded pregnant woman who was taken on a stretcher from a maternity hospital that was bombed by Russia last week has died, along with her baby, The Associated Press has learned.
Images of the woman, whom the AP has not been able to identify, were seen around the world, personifying the horror of an attack on civilians.
She was one of at least three pregnant women tracked down by AP from the maternity hospital that was bombarded Wednesday in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The other two survived, along with their newborn daughters.
In video and photos shot by AP journalists after the hospital attack, the wounded woman stroked her bloodied lower left abdomen as emergency workers carried her through the rubble, her blanched face mirroring her shock at what had just happened.
It was among the most brutal moments so far in Russia’s now 19-day-old war in Ukraine.
The woman was taken to another hospital, closer to the front line, where doctors tried to save her. Realizing she was losing her baby, medics said, she had cried out to them, “Kill me now!”
Dr. Timur Marin said Saturday that the woman’s pelvis had been crushed and her hip detached. Her baby was delivered via cesarean section but showed “no signs of life,” he said.
They tried to save the woman, and “more than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn’t produce results,” Marin said. “Both died.”
In the chaos after the airstrike, medical workers did not get her name before her husband and father took away her body. Doctors said they were grateful that she didn’t end up in the mass graves being dug for many of Mariupol’s dead.
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