'They said anyone who left would be shot’: Inside a Mariupol hospital

An image of a woman being stretchered out of the rubble by rescuers is one of the defining images of the terror wrought during the siege of the southern port city

Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov, File)

When the husband of a heavily pregnant woman came looking for his wife after the Mariupol maternity hospital attack, describing her by her tattoos and earrings, Alina Buzunar had to tell him that she had died, and took the man to the morgue to identify the body.

“He was absolutely calm until he found her,” she said. “Because he told us that until the last, he hoped it was not her. Then he cried a lot. It was a very sad situation.”