According to the Associated Press, a pregnant mother and her baby perished when Russia bombarded the maternity facility where she was about to give birth. The image of the lady being carried to an ambulance on a stretcher has gone viral, encapsulating the anguish of an attack on humanity’s most defenseless.

The lady was seen rubbing her bleeding lower abdomen as rescuers hurried her through the debris in the besieged city of Mariupol, her pale face expressing her disbelief at what had just happened, in video and photographs captured by AP photographers after the hospital attack on Wednesday. It was one of the most heinous scenes of Russia’s now 19-day-long assault on Ukraine.

The lady was taken to a different hospital, one that was even closer to the front lines, where physicians worked hard to keep her alive. “Kill me now!” she yelled out to doctors as she realized she was losing her baby, according to medics.

The woman’s pelvis was crushed and her hip was separated, according to surgeon Timur Marin. The infant was delivered through cesarean section, but the surgeon stated it exhibited “no indications of life.”

They then turned their attention to the mother.

“More than 30 minutes of mother resuscitation had no results,” Marin said on Saturday.

“Both of them died.”

Medics didn’t have time to learn the woman’s name before her husband and father arrived to carry her corpse away in the commotion that followed Wednesday’s bombing. At the very least, they claimed, someone came to get her, so she wouldn’t wind up in the mass graves being excavated for many of Mariupol’s dead.

Russian authorities, accused of war crimes, stated that the maternity facility had been taken over by Ukrainian fanatics to serve as a base, and that no patients or medics were left inside. The photographs were labeled “false news” by Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations and the Russian Embassy in London.

Journalists from the Associated Press, who have been reporting from within the blockaded Mariupol since the beginning of the war, witnessed the attack and seen the casualties and damage firsthand. They recorded and photographed multiple bloodied pregnant ladies leaving the blown-out maternity unit, medics yelling, and toddlers weeping.

On Friday and Saturday, the AP crew tracked down the victims at the hospital where they had been moved on the outskirts of Mariupol.

Electricity from emergency generators is allocated for operating rooms in a city that has been without food, water, power, or heat for more than a week.

Outside, blasts rattled the walls as survivors detailed their tragedy. Shelling and gunfire are intermittent but persistent in the neighborhood. Even while physicians and nurses focus on their duties, emotions are running high.

Mariana Vishegirskaya, a blogger, gave birth to a girl the day after the attack and recalled Wednesday’s incident while holding her infant Veronika. Russian officials claimed she was an actress in a staged attack when images and video showed her walking down debris-strewn stairs while holding a blanket over her pregnant form.

“It happened on March 9 in Mariupol’s Hospital No. 3.” “We were laying in wards when glasses, frames, windows, and walls burst apart,” Vishegirskaya told The Associated, still dressed in the polka dot pajamas she wore when she left.

“We have no idea how that happened.” We were in our wards, and some of us had enough time to cover ourselves, while others did not.”

Her suffering was just one of many in Mariupol, which has become as a symbol of defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to smash democratic Ukraine and rewrite the international map in his favor. Russian soldiers have expanded their attack further in Ukraine as a result of their inability to subjugate Mariupol.

Meanwhile, the 430,000-strong Azov Sea port city, which is critical to the construction of a land bridge connecting Russia and Russian-annexed Crimea, is slowly starving.

Each imminent childbirth creates increased strain in the ramshackle new maternity unit.

“Every delivering mother has gone through a lot,” nurse Olga Vereshagina remarked.

During the blast, one of the bewildered mothers lost several of her toes. On Friday, doctors performed a C-section on her, delicately removing her daughter and frantically stroking the infant to promote signs of life.

The infant screams after a few breathless seconds.

Joyful cheers reverberate across the room. Alana the newborn sobs, her mother weep, and medical personnel wipe their tears away.