A pregnant woman and her baby died after Russian military troops bombed the maternity hospital where she was meant to give birth, The Associated Press reported on Monday. Images of the woman being rushed to an ambulance on a stretcher had circled the world, epitomising the horror of an attack on humanity’s most innocent.

In a video, after the attack on the hospital, the woman was seen stroking her bloodied lower abdomen as rescuers rushed her through the rubble in the besieged city of Mariupol, 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 on Ukraine.

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The woman was rushed to another hospital, yet closer to the frontline, where doctors laboured to keep her alive. Realising 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 caesarean section, but it showed “no signs of life,” the surgeon said.

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“More than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn’t produce results,” Marin said Saturday, adding that both died during the process. 

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. 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.

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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 UN and the Russian Embassy in London called the images “fake news.”