Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022
(Picture: AP)A pregnant woman and her baby who were pictured following a Russian missile strike on a hospital, in the city of Mariupol, have died.
The woman was shown being carried away after the attack on a maternity hospital, but she and her baby later died despite the best efforts of the doctors, the Associated Press reported.
Surgeon Timur Marin said the woman had suffered a crushed pelvis and a detached hip. Her baby, delivered via caesarean section, showed no signs of life. After 30 minutes of resuscitation, medics pronounced the women dead on Saturday, Mr Marin said.
Responding to the news Health Secretary Sajid Javid told BBC Breakfast this morning: “My reaction...it fills me with rage to see something like that. These are appalling atrocities being committed on innocent civilians in Ukraine by the Russians.
“This was an attack on a hospital, a health facility. We know already from the World Health Organisation, they have documented evidence of 31 such attacks throughout Ukraine against such health facilities. These are war crimes and Putin will be held responsible.”
As part of the UK’s efforts to bring war crimes charges against Mr Putin and his military commanders, the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab was on Monday travelling to the Netherlands to offer support to the International Criminal Court.
Mr Raab was due to meet in the Hague with ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, Registrar Peter Lewis and President of the Court, Judge Piotr HofmaÅski to discuss how Britain can help with the immediate priority of gathering and preserving evidence.
“Russian commanders carrying out war crimes should know they cannot act with impunity,” Mr Raab said. “Like Radovan Karadzic and Charles Taylor before them, their actions risk landing them in a jail cell.”
“The highest number of victims are in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kherson, Mykolayiv and Zhytomyr regions,” it said in a statement.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed, despite numerous pictures and reports, that the attack on the hospital in the southern city of Mariupol was staged.
Russian officials also claimed Ukrainian troops had cleared out the hospital in order to use it as a base for attacks.
On Sunday, 35 people were killed and more than 130 were injured following a missile strike on a base in western Ukraine, near the border with Poland.
Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov called the shelling a “terrorist attack”.
He said: “This is new terrorist attack on peace & security near the EU-Nato border. Action must be taken to stop this.”
On Monday morning, Russian forces also attacked a residential building in Kyiv, with reports from Ukraine’s State Emergency Service saying two bodies have been discovered.
Peace talks were set to take place on Monday morning, although Ukrainian officials claim Vladimir Putin’s stance has not changed.
As of March 13, the UN said over 500 people had been killed and over a thousand had been injured since the start of the conflict.
