Reality check in the trenches

by Yossela Sat Apr 12, 2003 23:07

At Yarmouk Hospital in Iraq, floors were coated with stale blood,and wards stank of gangrene. The wounded lay on soiled sheets in hospital lobbies, screaming with pain, or begging for tranquillisers. Hospital orderlies in blue surgical gowns shouldered kalashnikovs to guard against mauraders . Ambulance drivers staged couter raids on looters to reclaim stolen medicines and surgical supplies.

Thair Mohe el-Din, an Iraqi searching for his dead brother amongst piles of rotting corpses at an Iraqi hospital. On Monday the family home in the beyaa neighbourhood of Bagdad, was bombed by American aircraft, wounding one of Mr Dins brothers and killing another outright. He had visited 7 hospitals and countless morgues searching for his dead brother. "Its my country and I hate Saddam" he said."I don't like Saddam, I hate him, but when I see American soldiers I want to spit on them". Dr Hashimi said " We are working with no anesthetic at all". "The doctors are exhausted. There is no water to wash our hands from patient to patient."
48 hrs after Baghdad was liberated- as President Bush would call it, the city was in the throes of chaos. Men with kalashnikovs dragged drivers out of their cars at gunpoint, babies were killed by cluster bombs and hospitals that carried on right through the bombing were transformed into visions of hell.

by caspian Sun Apr 13, 2003 01:53

Every British soldier carries in his breast pocket a dose of morphine in case he is shot. Children are having limbs amputated without anasthetic.