When a Russian missile strike hit a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol early last month, Elena Karas, a nurse, was on the third floor taking care of 13 premature babies, two of whom had been abandoned.
The hospital was cold, having only a generator in the delivery room due to Mariupol's electricity, water and gas cut off. Ms. Karas was using plastic bottles filled with hot water to keep the babies warm and was watching a mother change a diaper when the missile hit, throwing the nurse to the ground and wounding her forehead with a shard of glass.
Everything turned white, as if flour covered all the surfaces, Ms. Karas, 57, said she fled from northern Italy in a telephone interview. Everything was destroyed in a single second. Evidence of atrocities against civilians has been evidenced by the brutality of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The attack took place at City Hospital No. 3 in Mariupol was one of the first shocking signs that Ukraine was facing a merciless war. A photograph of a pregnant woman killed in the strike became an iconic image of the war's toll.