Pregnant woman in widely-shared photo from Ukraine dies with her baby after Russian attack

The pregnant Ukrainian woman photographed last week rubbing her lower abdomen as rescuers carried her through the wreckage of a Russian-bombed maternity hospital has died, The Associated Press reported Monday. The woman, whose name is unknown, was meant to give birth at the hospital in Mariupol before the city was attacked.

Her baby has also died, per AP.

The devastating photo, now seen across the world, memorialized one of the "most brutal moments so far in Russia's now 19-day-old war on Ukraine," AP writes.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Upon her rescue from the rubble, the woman was carried to another hospital even closer to the frontline, where doctors worked tirelessly to save her. Her pelvis was crushed and her hip detached, surgeon Timur Marin told AP.

When she realized she was losing her child, medics said the woman cried out, "Kill me now!"

The baby was ultimately delivered via c-section, but it showed "no signs of life," Marin said. Afterward, "more than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn't produce results," he added.

News of the mother and child's deaths reinvigorated condemnation of the attack, which Russia has baselessly justified by claiming the hospital had been "had been taken over by Ukrainian extremists to use as a base," per AP. The country's ambassador to the United Nations and its embassy in London even called images of the bombing "fake news."

The tragic deaths serve as "a horrific reminder that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin's war is stealing the futures of many families," CNN's Brianna Keilar said Monday morning.

"Crimes against humanity," commented American priest and writer James Martin.

The Guardian's Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth called the news "absolutely horrific."