A nurse caring for 13 premature babies at amaternity ward in Mariupol, Ukraine, is still in disbelief about the deadly strike last month that left her injured and damaged the health care facility forpregnant women and newborns.
Karas, 57, was one of six medical workers inside City Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol, the besieged city in southern Ukraine where officials saidthousands have diedwhile many more remain stranded, at the time of theattack, which was an early indicator of the brutality civilians and the country’s most vulnerable would face in thewar with Russia.
“Everything turned white, as if flour covered all the surfaces,” she said. “Everything was destroyed in one second.”
A pregnant woman who was photographed getting carried away on a stretcher amid smoldering rubble laterdied from her injuries, the Associated Press previously reported.
Mariupol.Evgeniy Maloletka/AP/Shutterstock
Russia denied it was responsible for the attack, claiming the facility was not in use at the time and that crisis actors using makeup to appear injured were photographed rather than real patients. Russian officials have similarly denied targeting civilian sites in their invasion, despite mounting reports otherwise.
Before the hospital was destroyed in March, Karas said she could hear bombs and gunfire as she walked to work past dead bodies on the streets of Mariupol, where overwhelmed residents resorted toburying their dead in a mass grave.
“I was scared, really scared,” she told theTimes. “But I had to go — that was my job. If I didn’t go, who would take care of the children?”
The work made her feel useful, she said, and she thought she was safer at the hospital than she would have been at home. “What could I do there?” she said. “Sit, trembling in fear?”
Damage at Mariupol’s children’s hospital.Evgeniy Maloletka/AP/Shutterstock
“Either you stay in the city or you survive,” she told theTimesfrom Italy, where she has found temporary work caring for an older woman in Verona.
By the time she left, her home had no door and only broken windows. She’s not sure whether the building still stands. “In my head, it does not compute that there’s nowhere to go back to, to go back to a desert,” she said. “Every person needs a place to return to.”
Russia’sattack on Ukrainecontinues after their forces launched a large-scale invasion on Feb. 24 — the first major land conflict in Europe in decades.
More than 4 million have fled the country as refugees — and half are children,according to the United Nations. Millions more have been displaced inside Ukraine.
Mariupol’s children’s hospital.Evgeniy Maloletka/AP/Shutterstock
With NATO forces amassed in the region, various countries are offering aid or military support to the resistance. Ukraine’s PresidentVolodymyr Zelenskyyhas called for peace talks — so far unsuccessful — while urging his country to fight back.
Putin insists Ukraine has historic ties to Russia and he is acting in the best security interests of his country. Zelenskyy vowed not to bend.
“Nobody is going to break us, we’re strong, we’re Ukrainians,“he told the European Unionin a speech in the early days of the fighting, adding, “Life will win over death. And light will win over darkness.”
source: people.com
