Doctors, crater prove Russia's airstrike hospital misinfo
LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — A woman on the verge of giving birth with her leg flayed open by shrapnel. A shockwave that shattered the glass and ceramic lining of a room with medical waste. A nurse who suffered a concussion.
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“With just one blow, there was simply nothing, no children’s clinic, it was simply blown away,” said Dr. Lyudmila Mykhailenko, the acting director at Hospital No. 3 in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The sprawling courtyard of the hospital complex was — and remains — “one continuous shell crater.”
Three doctors and a paramedic spoke with The Associated Press to offer new details from a March 9 airstrike that happened when communications were all but severed, and to counter fresh Russian misinformation. They left the city separately in private cars, as have thousands from Mariupol in recent weeks, and are now scattered in other towns around Ukraine and in Poland.
Their testimony, along with AP reporting, AP footage from the scene and interviews with munitions experts who analyzed the size of the shell crater, directly contradicts Russian claims that there was no airstrike. Russian officials have repeatedly tried to sow doubt about atrocities in Mariupol, the shattered city in eastern Ukraine that is a key Russian military objective. In particular, Russia has made great efforts to falsely blame the death and destruction in the city on Ukrainian shelling.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-25204be08db8868e858f624f851d2ae3