Civilian casualties grow by hour

By CAHAL MILMO and ANDREW BUNCOMBE

At al-Kindi hospital in Baghdad yesterday, stocks of painkillers had run so low that surgeons were operating on patients anaesthetised with headache pills.

At the Medical City hospital complex, overflowing wards were without electricity or water.

Of the 27 operating theatres just six were functioning, with the help of a backup generator that had worked nonstop for 72 hours and could fail.

Aid agencies say Baghdad's casualty units are being run by a skeleton staff of doctors and nurses who have struggled to work through the fighting. Most have worked solidly for three days, snatching a few minutes' rest between emergencies.

All the while a steady stream of wounded civilians are flowing into the 12 main hospitals in the backs of pick-ups or carried by their families.

Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, part of a team from the International Committee for the Red Cross trying to provide emergency supplies, said: "Now you have military engagements at ground level, most people are hit much more seriously. It's all the more work for the doctors. If street-fighting becomes more widespread in the urban area, health facilities could become totally overwhelmed."

The scale of suffering has become impossible to gauge in a war fought by soldiers in civilian clothing, where civilians are shot because they might be the enemy.

The World Health Organisation, with 330 local staff in Iraq, estimates civilian dead and injured at "several hundred" a day.

At one point, the military and civilian toll from bombing by coalition jets and clashes with United States forces along the Tigris was so heavy that one hospital received 100 casualties an hour.

Yesterday at the Kindi, in east Baghdad, 10 badly wounded patients an hour arrived during a lull in the fighting. By midday, 75 civilians had been admitted for gunshot and shrapnel injuries or burns.

Across Iraq the number of civilians killed stands at 1087, based on news reports of bodies seen and counted by journalists. Experts believe the true figure is far higher.

There are also the military wounded, taken to hospitals where reporters are not allowed. The Pentagon estimated that 2000 to 4000 Iraqi soldiers were killed in the first two days of the battle for Baghdad.

For the doctors trying to cope with this flow of the dying, the problem was the complexity and quantity of the injuries.

Dr Mohammed Kamil, a surgeon at the Kindi, said: "We're now getting not just shrapnel wounds. These are wounds from missiles and rockets. They are amputations. They require more urgent surgery."

The surgery is increasingly done in primitive circumstances. At the Kindi, doctors have been able to give only the equivalent of two headache pills for surgery.

Clean towels do not exist because the hospital washing machines overload the emergency generators.

Aid groups say the most pressing threat in Baghdad is a lack of water. All water treatment and sewage works are working on back-up generators, many of which have failed.

Health workers elsewhere report grave shortages of supplies, especially anaesthetics such as morphine, and antibiotics to fight infection in the growing heat of early summer.

Specialist equipment also is short.

Yet aid agencies say those injured in Baghdad are the lucky ones.

Help has yet to reach towns south of the capital - including Amarah, Najaf, Muthanna and Hillah - and the medical situation is feared to be dire.

And at a British field hospital near Basra, two brothers - Abbas, 2, and Mohammed, 4 - were being treated for 40 per cent burns to their faces and arms inflicted while playing with gunpowder they had found.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq war