Pregnant Woman in Gripping Ukraine Photo Has Died

It has become one of the enduring images of the Ukraine war: A photo by AP photographer Evgeniy Maloletka shows a pregnant woman being carried on a stretcher after Russia shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol. Now, the AP reports that the woman and her unborn child have died. They were rushed to another hospital after the attack, but a medical team that included surgeon Timur Marin could not save them. The woman suffered severe injuries to her pelvis and hip in the shelling, per the AP. The baby was delivered first but was stillborn, and "more than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn’t produce results,” Marin tells the AP. She has not been identified.

Russia has justified the shelling by saying that extremists had taken over the hospital, asserting that all its patients had been evacuated before the assault. Russian authorities even suggested that images of a second pregnant woman shown after the shelling were phony, notes USA Today. However, the AP reports that the woman in those images, blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya, gave birth to a girl one day after the airstrike. The developments illustrate the plight of pregnant women in Ukraine: The UN says more than 80,000 are due to give birth in the next three months, at a time when oxygen and medical supplies are running low, per the Washington Post. (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)