A young Spanish mother died hours after giving birth when a hospital lift moved upwards before she was fully inside the compartment.

Spanish media reports that the woman was cut in half as she lay on a stretcher holding her new-born baby. Her feet were trapped on the outside of the lift shaft.

The woman, named as Rocio Cortes Nunez, 25, was being moved in a trolley in Valme Hospital in Seville, southern Spain, hours after doctors had performed a caesarean to deliver her third child.

But before she was fully inside the lift compartment, it moved upwards of its own accord.

Glasgow Times:

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Doctors were unable to save Ms Nunez, despite firefighters working for two hours to reach her body inside the compartment after she became trapped between the lift frame and the roof.

Miraculously, her newborn baby was unharmed in the accident but was being treated for a non-serious respiratory problems not believed to be related to the incident.

Husband of four years, Jose Gaspar, told Spanish paper ABC: “This cannot end like this.

“This time it has been Rocio but tomorrow it could be another person. I’m a total wreck.”