“I looked at the ground and saw my little granddaughter with her head completely smashed”: the heartbreaking stories of the Mariupol bombing

In his hospital bed, little Artem stares into space. He grabs a small yellow toy tractor, but says nothing as specialist nurses monitor his condition.

The Russian shell that hurled shrapnel into her belly also seriously injured her parents and grandparents as they tried to flee Mariupol.

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Victim of Putin’s war and not yet three years old.

In the next bed lies 15-year-old Masha, also from near Mariupol. Her right leg was amputated after a Russian shell explosion tore it apart last Tuesday.

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The worst of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and what relentless Russian bombardment has done to people trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol can be seen at the Regional Children’s Hospital in the nearby city of Zaporizhia.

Hundreds of people have been evacuated here. His physical wounds are obvious and can, to some extent, heal. The psychological trauma will live with them forever.

Bodies littering the streets

Doctors here and surviving family members of the children asked us to tell their stories, including Dr. Yuri Borzenko, director of the Children’s Hospital. He cannot hide his contempt for what Russia has done.

“I hate Russia,” he says without a hint of emotion on his face. “The girl who lost her leg (Masha) was so traumatized that she didn’t eat or drink for days. She couldn’t mentally deal with what had happened. We had to feed her intravenously.”

Masha, 15, doctors had to amputate her leg.

“Another child,” says the doctor, “a six-year-old boy, with shrapnel in his skull, described, without tears or emotion, how saw his mother burnt to death in his car after it was hit. Two days later he was like, ‘Daddy, buy me a new mommy, I need someone to drive me to school.'”

What is happening in Mariupol is a humanitarian disaster, even -perhaps- a war crime. It is estimated that 90% of the city’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

Following the destruction last week of a theater where more than 1,000 people were sheltering, it is now reported that an arts school, with 400 people inside, has also been attacked.

Those who have been able to escape from Mariupol speak of unimaginable horrors. First-hand accounts of bodies lying in the streets, from destroyed houses. Inundated with those memories, they put as much physical distance as they can between themselves and the experience they went through.

“I didn’t care if I would die in Mariupol or trying to escape”

In a cafe in the central city of Dnipro, which itself has been attacked by Russia, we met Oksana Gusak. With her husband Andrii and her parents, Oksana fled Mariupol last week through mined roads and a dozen hostile Russian army checkpoints.

Yuri Borzenko, the doctor who has had to take charge of the children’s hospital, does not hide his contempt for Russia.

Drinking a glass of water now feels like a luxury for Oksana, after they ran out of water in Mariupol.

They all politely declined our offer of coffee, saying it would be an insult to the family members they left behind in parts of Mariupol from which it was impossible to flee.

Her husband, Andrii, told me that there was no water supply in the city, no electricity, no heating and no communicationsso they had no choice but to leave.

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“We were definitely taking a risk, but at the time I didn’t care if I would die in Mariupol or trying to escape,” says Oksana.

Oksana Gusak and her family are among the 35,000 people who have been forced to flee Mariupol.

“We knew there was a possibility, that we would be attacked and we realized that we had to take that risk. If we had stayed, the chances of survival would be zero.”

Andrii and Oksana are lucky to have escaped unharmed and together. They know.

“God, why are you doing this to me?”

In Zaporizhia Children’s Hospital I met a grieving and inconsolable father, whose family had been completely torn apart.

His daughter Natasha, 26, and granddaughter Dominica, 4, were killed when a Russian shell landed near the shelter where the whole family was seeking shelter from the shelling of Mariupol.

Vladimir and his family before the war. (FAMILY PHOTO / BBC).

I looked at the ground and there lay my little granddaughter with her head completely shattered”Vladimir says. “She was lying there gasping for breath and right next to her was my daughter with broken legs, open fractures.”

Dominica, whose photos her grandfather almost caresses on his phone, died instantly. His mother died of her injuries the next day.

Although he is broken, Vladimir tries to stay strong for his second daughter, Diana. She was also seriously injured in the blast and was about to undergo emergency surgery.

But he couldn’t hide his pain. “God, why are you doing this to me? I wasn’t supposed to bury my children, my beautiful girls, I failed to protect them.”

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Source: Elcomercio