A young life shattered by the horror of war - A 12-year-old

bbchris

Monday, April 7, 2003 - Taken from scmp.com

A young life shattered by the horror of war

A 12-year-old lost his pregnant mother, his father and brother - and his arms

REUTERS in Baghdad

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Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12, was fast asleep when war shattered his life. A missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, maimed and badly burned.

At Baghdad's Kindi hospital yesterday, Ali - who lost both his arms - said: "It was midnight when the missile fell on us. My father, my mother and my brother died. My mother was five months pregnant. Our neighbours pulled me out and brought me here. I was unconscious."

With tears spilling down his cheeks, Ali asked about artificial limbs. "Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands?

"If I don't get a pair of hands I will commit suicide."

His aunt, three cousins and three other relatives staying with them were also killed in missile strikes on their house in Diala Bridge district east of Baghdad.

"We didn't want war. I was scared of this war," said Ali. "Our house was just a poor shack, why did they want to bomb us?" said the young boy, unaware that the area in which he lived was surrounded by military installations.

His aunt, Jamila Abbas, 53, looked after him, feeding him, washing him, comforting him with prayers and repeatedly telling him his parents had gone to heaven. Ali's suffering offered one snapshot of the daily horrors afflicting Iraqi civilians.

At the Kindi hospital, staff were overwhelmed by the sharp rise in casualties since US ground troops moved north to Baghdad on Thursday and intensified their aerial assault.

Ambulance after ambulance raced in with casualties from around the capital. Victim after victim was rushed in, many carried in bed sheets after the stretchers ran out.

Staff had no time even to clean the blood from trolleys.

With many staff unable to reach the hospital due to the bombing, doctors worked round the clock performing surgery, taking blood, giving injections and ferrying the wounded.

Osama Saleh al-Duleimi, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant director at Kindi, said they were suffering shortages of anaesthesia, painkillers and staff.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been touring hospitals to provide first aid and surgery kits.

Doctors who treated Iraqi victims of two previous wars say they are taken aback by the injuries. Most suffered massive trauma, including head, abdominal and limb injuries from lethal weapons, they said.

"I've been a doctor for 25 years and this is the worst I've seen in terms of the number of casualties and fatal wounds," said Dr Duleimi, 48, who witnessed the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf war over Kuwait.

He said: "This is a disaster because they're attacking civilians."

Sources estimated the casualties at hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded.

"This war is more destructive than the previous wars. In the previous battles, the weapons seemed merely disabling; now they're much more lethal," another doctor, Sadek al-Mukhtar, said.

"Before the war I did not regard America as my enemy. Now I do. There are the military and there are the civilians. War should be against the military. America is killing civilians."

MIKE BURN

bbchris

Oh that is so sad