Irish funding 'Christmas miracle' surgeries on tiny babies amid Ukrainian rubble

In one case, the hospital had run out of blood stocks prompting American Dr Ian Alexander (pictured) to donate his own blood to ensure a one-day-old baby could undergo surgery.

Under the dark shadow of war, an Irish-funded mercy mission has brought the Christmas miracle of life to seriously ill newborns in war-torn Ukraine.

Under the most extreme of circumstances, a 12-person team of paediatric surgeons has been performing life-saving cardiac surgeries on babies and children - some just a day old - in a hospital in Lviv, in western Ukraine.