- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Grim
scenes greeted Red Cross officials at the only Baghdad hospital they could
reach through fighting on Monday, with casualties streaming in, surgeons
working flat out and anesthetics running low.
-
- A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad said heavy fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces
in the city prevented officials reaching any hospital but Kindi, near the
city center.
-
- There, doctors said they had taken in so many casualties
that they were running short of anesthetics and some equipment, which the
Red Cross helped to replenish by delivering a truckload of supplies.
-
- ICRC Spokesman Roland Huguenin-Benjamin told Reuters:
"Surgeons have been working round the clock for the past two days
and most are exhausted. Conditions are terrible.
-
- "You could hear very close range explosions. The
windows are rattling from the thud of explosions. We saw a lot of ambulances
and private cars, bringing in casualties."
-
- Doctors at Kindi said the hospital had taken in four
dead and 176 wounded in the last 24 hours.
-
- The picture was similar at Kadhimiya hospital in the
north of the city, where doctors told Reuters correspondent Hassan Hafidh
that 18 dead and 141 wounded had been brought in since Sunday.
-
- Many patients said they were wounded by bombing as they
tried to flee northwards by car on the road to the city of Mosul. One woman
said she lost her parents and five siblings.
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- CLEAN WATER A PRIORITY
-
- "If the others have as many (casualties as Kindi),
it is problematic. Tomorrow, we will try to go to others," Huguenin-Benjamin
said.
-
- He said hospitals were now relying on generators and
that getting clean water to patients was a priority.
-
- "We have also delivered bags of drinking water,
tens of thousands of liters, to many hospitals to make sure that patients
do not drink water that is not clear," he said.
-
- The ICRC is one of few humanitarian organizations to
have international staff still in Baghdad, and at its headquarters in Geneva
it said the capital was finding it hard to cope.
-
- "Some hospitals cannot take any more war wounded.
They are stretched to the limits," spokeswoman Nada Doumani said.
-
- The wounded were not being turned away, but many hospitals
have run out of beds and patients were being treated wherever doctors could
find room.
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- Iraq's problems have been compounded by international
sanctions against the government of President Saddam Hussein which made
it hard to stock analgesics and morphine.
-
- Aid agencies have long warned that Iraq and its some
26 million people were in poor shape after two earlier wars and years of
sanctions.
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- POWER OUTAGES
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- Power outages in many parts of Baghdad in recent days
had compounded health concerns because they cut electricity to hospitals
and water treatment plants.
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- On Sunday, grids feeding Baghdad were mostly not working
and less than 20 percent of households were receiving limited power during
the night, the ICRC said in its latest report on Iraq.
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- "Water is becoming a worry. There are certain areas
of Baghdad which do not have any at all," Doumani said in Geneva.
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- Lack of clean drinking water is a major cause of diarrhea
and respiratory diseases, which already take a heavy toll of Iraqi children.
-
- Paul Sherlock, an aid official working with the United
Nations, said distributing water would be difficult with fighting raging.
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- "People will be able to manage for a day. If it
goes on for longer, it means you will not be able to flush the toilets.
You will have only limited water for straight drinking," he said.
(Additional reporting by Richard Waddington in Geneva, Suleiman al-Khalidi
in Amman and Kate Holton in London)
-
- (For more news about emergency relief visit
Reuters AlertNet http:/www.alertnet.org
- email: alertnet@reuters.com; +44 207 5 42 2432.)
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