Kirkuk patients succumbed to enemy within

KIRKUK - When policemen, soldiers and officials in Kirkuk, injured in insurgent attacks, arrived at the emergency section of the main local hospital they hoped that their chances of survival had just gone up as doctors rushed to tend their wounds.

In fact many of the wounded men lying on their stretchers were almost certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a member of an insurgent cell.

Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed no less than 43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has revealed.

"He was called Dr Louay and, when the terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier, he would finish them off," police Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff said. "He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood."

Louay carried out his murder campaign over an eight- to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk. He was particularly willing to assist with emergencies.

With 272 soldiers, policemen and civilians killed and 1220 injured in insurgent attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were rushed off their feet and glad of any help they could get. Nobody noticed how many patients were dying soon after being tended by their enthusiastic young colleague.

Louay was finally arrested only after the head of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin, was captured and confessed. "I was really shocked that a doctor and an educated men should do such a thing," said Jaff.

The murderous work of Louay is symbolic of the ferocity of the struggle for Kirkuk. The dispute over its fate is the most important reason why the political parties in Baghdad have failed to create a new government three months after the December 15.

The Kurds, expelled from Kirkuk and replaced with Arab settlers by Saddam Hussein, captured the city on April 10, 2003. They have no intention of giving it up. "We will never leave Kirkuk," said Rizgar Ali Hamajan, the former Kurdish pesh merga (soldier) who heads the Provincial Council. "It is part of Kurdistan."

But Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has frustrated Kurdish demands, enshrined in the new constitution, for Kurds to be allowed to return to Kirkuk and Arabs settlers to be removed to their original homes. The Kurds then expect a referendum in Kirkuk that would lead to the province joining the highly autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

The guerrilla war continues at a low but persistent level. The Arabs are not going to leave or be marginalised without a fight. Kirkuk is not a place where many people would like to live, but the battle to control it may yet destroy Iraq.

- INDEPENDENT