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The bloodied pregnant woman seen being stretchered out of a blown-up Ukrainian maternity hospital has since died — after also losing her baby.
The unidentified mom-to-be was photographed stroking her blood-covered belly as rescuers rushed her through the rubble of Wednesday’s blast in Mariupol — where officials said Monday that at least 2,500 people have been killed so far during Russia’s bombardment.
She was rushed to a hospital on the frontlines with her pelvis crushed and hip detached, surgeon Timur Marin said.
When she realized she was likely losing her baby, she cried, “Kill me now!” the surgeon recalled.
Still, they tried to deliver the child by cesarean section, but the baby showed “no signs of life,” Marin said. They then focused on the mother but “more than 30 minutes of resuscitation of the mother didn’t produce results,” Marin said.
“Both died,” he confirmed.
It was not immediately clear if mother and child were among the three people — including a young girl — that officials said had died in the blast. At least 17 others had been injured in the attack that many decried as a war crime.
In the chaos, medics said they didn’t have time to get the woman’s name before her husband and father came to take away her body.
Get the latest updates in the Russia-Ukraine conflict with The Post’s live coverage.
However, they noted relief that she was at least retrieved — saving her from ending up in the mass graves being dug to cope with the thousands of dead in the hardest-hit city where corpses are left in the street.
At least one of the expectant mothers lost some of her toes in the bombing, the hospital staff said.
Another pregnant woman caught in dramatic pictures escaping the maternity hospital attack successfully gave birth to a healthy baby girl the next day.
Blogger Mariana Vishegirskaya hugged her newborn Veronika as she recounted the account while still wearing the same polka dot pajamas as when she fled.
“We were laying in wards when glasses, frames, windows and walls flew apart,” Vishegirskaya said.
“We don’t know how it happened. We were in our wards and some had time to cover themselves, some didn’t.”
The women all became symbols of the overwhelming suffering in Mariupol, where at least 2,500 residents have been killed, according to presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych.
Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, even making ludicrous attempts to suggest that the injured pregnant women were heavily made-up crisis actors.
On Monday, Russia’s military forces kept up their punishing campaign to capture Ukraine’s capital with fighting and artillery fire in Kyiv’s suburbs.
At least one person was killed and three injured at a residential building in Kyiv on Monday, the Kyiv Independent said, noting that officials lowered the toll after initially saying two had died.
Firefighters worked to rescue survivors, painstakingly carrying an injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still-smoking building.
A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there, officials said. Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russia’s stalled attempt to take the capital, regional administration chief Oleksiy Kuleba said on Ukrainian television.
It came a day after Russia brought the invasion dangerously close to NATO’s doorstep after an airstrike on a military base near the Polish border killed 35 people, according to Ukraine.
The ongoing deaths also came as a new round of talks between the two nations was also scheduled for Monday.
“Negotiations. 4th round. On peace, ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees. Hard discussion,” Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said online.
However, he expressed reservations given that Russia “still has a delusion that 19 days of violence against (Ukrainian) peaceful cities is the right strategy.”
With Post wires
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