Ukrainian pregnant woman, baby die after Russian air strike on maternity hospital: ‘Kill me now’

Both the Ukrainian pregnant woman seen in a viral photo being carried out on a stretcher after Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol and her baby have died, according to a report. 

The Associated Press captured photos and video of the publicly unidentified woman – lying on a stretcher beneath a watermelon patterned blanket with an empty look on her face while clutching her lower abdomen – as rescuers carried her through the rubble. 

Trees were destroyed and debris strewn on the ground. Behind them, windows were blown out on the badly damaged façade of the hospital in an image that shocked the world and exemplified to Western officials the horrors of Russia’s aggression toward civilians.  

RUSSIA, UKRAINE WAR: MATERNITY AND CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL BOMBED, MARIUPOL ‘BESIEGED’ BY RUSSIA INVADERS 

The woman was rushed to another hospital, yet closer to the frontline, where doctors labored to keep her alive. Realizing she was losing her baby, medics said, she cried out to them, “Kill me now!”

Surgeon Timur Marin found the woman’s pelvis crushed and hip detached. Medics delivered the baby via cesarean section, but it showed “no signs of life,” the surgeon told the AP. 

Then, they focused on the mother.

“More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn’t produce results,” Marin said Saturday. “Both died.”

In the chaos after Wednesday’s airstrike, medics didn’t have time to get the woman’s name before her husband and father came to take away her body, according to the AP.

At least someone came to retrieve her, they said — so she didn’t end up in the mass graves being dug for many of Mariupol’s growing number of dead. 

In a city that’s been without food supplies, water, power or heat for more than a week, electricity from emergency generators is reserved for operating rooms. Diplomatic negotiations have failed to secure humanitarian corridors for Mariupol’s some 400,000 civilians to escape heavily shelling by the Russians. Theft has become widespread and photos have shown dead bodies strewn across city blocks. 

Accused of war crimes, Russian officials claimed the maternity hospital had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside. Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. and the Russian Embassy in London called the images “fake news.”

UKRAINIAN WOMAN WHO SURVIVED BOMBING GIVES BIRTH TO BABY GIRL 

AP journalists, who have been reporting from inside blockaded Mariupol since early in the war, documented the attack and said they saw the victims and damage firsthand. 

They shot video and photos of several bloodstained, pregnant mothers fleeing the blown-out maternity ward, medics shouting, and children crying. The AP team then tracked down the victims on Friday and Saturday in the hospital where they had been transferred, on the outskirts of Mariupol.

The AP reported last week that a different pregnant woman – see in viral photos with a bloodied face fleeing the damaged maternity hospital down a flight of stairs in a polka dot pajama set, carrying a blanket and several bags – had survived and delivered a baby girl. 

After the bombing, the woman, identified as Mariana Vishegirskaya, was taken to another hospital on the outskirts of the city, facing the front line, and gave birth via cesarean to baby Veronika Thursday. 

On Friday, her husband, Yuri, lovingly held up his daughter, then she was tucked back next to her mother, according to photos and accounts from AP journalists. 

“It happened on March 9 in Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol. We were laying in wards when glasses, frames, windows and walls flew apart,” Vishegirskaya, still wearing the same polka dot pajamas as when she fled, told The AP. “We don’t know how it happened. We were in our wards and some had time to cover themselves, some didn’t.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The Twitter account for the Russian Embassy in London claimed she was not a victim, but a beauty blogger and model who was posing as two different pregnant women, according to the AP. 

While Vishegirskaya is a Ukrainian blogger in Mariupol who posts about skin care, makeup and cosmetics, there is no evidence that she was anything but a patient at the hospital. She has posted multiple photos and videos on Instagram documenting her pregnancy in the past few months, and in one, she can be seen wearing the same polka-dot pajamas as on Wednesday.

Twitter has since removed the Russian Embassy’s tweets, and existing links are directed to a notice that says the posts violated Twitter’s rules.

As of Sunday, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed 85 children and wounded more than 100 others, according to Ukraine Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova. 

She said that 369 educational institutions have also been damaged, 57 of which were destroyed in attacks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.