(16 Mar 2022) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4371155
A hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol is overflowing with patients it was never meant to deal with.
This hospital is the one of the few remaining structures taking people injured from artillery shells.
Now, besieged by Russian forces that have bombed other hospitals, it serves as an emergency centre, a maternity ward and a morgue.
Dr. Valeriy Drengar shines a light from his cell phone onto a pile of bodies lying in the basement of the hospital.
He said the underground floors were built as a food storage. Now, it is a morgue.
Drengar said the district hospital was not taking any more bodies as it’s morgue is beyond maximum capacity.
Bodies of people killed by shelling lay covered outside.
"All the other hospitals were bombed and noone could collect them. There’s no emergency services, there’s nobody," Drengar said.
"I don’t know where we will put them, how we will bury them. In a mass grave? I have no idea," he said.
This hospital number is part of a complex of medical buildings designed to be a general hospital. The other wards, such as the maternity ward, were destroyed.
On Tuesday over 28,800 civilians escaped the blockaded port of Mariupol through several humanitarian corridors, city officials said.
The successful evacuation by thousands of cars came even as Russian forces have renewed their shelling on the coastal city, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have struggled to stay alive without heat, food and clean water.
Russian troops seized the city’s largest hospital late Tuesday, holding hundreds people hostage inside the building, a regional official said.
Humanitarian convoys again failed to make it into Mariupol because of the Russian assault but managed to deliver aid and set up evacuation corridors from Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region.
Overall, more than three million refugees have fled Ukraine, the U.N. said – Europe’s largest refugee crisis since WWII.
Those who remain face the grim reality of war. Injured are still being brought to the hospital where doctors scramble to patch-them up with little supplies that are left.
A nurse said the newborn babies are sleeping in cribs covered by blankets to protect them from glass shattered during shelling.
The newborns ended up in this hospital after the Russian troops bombed the maternity ward forcing pregnant women and newborns to be evacuated.
"Everything fell upon us and we simply carried the children to here," the nurse said. "Look at this equipment here," she said pointing to an incubator. If it stops working that’s it."
Mariupol resident Olga Budko pleaded for help. "S.O.S. Help Mariupol. Children, women are being killed. Hospitals are overcrowded," she said.
While Russian forces have escalated their bombardment of Ukrainian cities, diplomatic activity is quickening, as well.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators agreed to meet again on Wednesday after a fourth round of talks that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as "more realistic" than previous meetings.
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