April 8, 2003	Tuesday	Safar 5, 1424

BAGHDAD, April 7: 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 anaesthetics running low.

A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad said heavy fighting between US and Iraqi forces in the city prevented officials reaching any hospital but Kindi, near the city centre.

There, doctors said they had taken in so many casualties that they were running short of anaesthetics and some equipment, which the Red Cross helped to replenish by delivering a truckload of supplies.

ICRC spokesman Roland Huguenin-Benjamin said: “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 a 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.

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 litres, to many hospitals to make sure that patients do not drink water that is not clear,” he said.—Reuters