BAGHDAD: Doctors, nurses and even the Christian chaplain at the US military hospital in Baghdad say they treat all patients the same, from US combatants to Iraqi children, soldiers or suspected insurgents.

The only difference is the “bad guys” are blindfolded so they can't inform on Iraqis working in the hospital as translators, medical liaison officers or cleaners whose lives would be in danger if it was known they work there.

Major Kwon Pyo, an Assembly of God Protestant chaplain stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, spends his days and nights in the emergency room as what he calls “a representative of God, bringing peace and comfort even in the midst of pain and suffering”.

Standing at the head of the stretcher as doctors tended to an Iraqi patient with gunshot wounds to both thighs on Monday, Pyo comforted the man with a hand on his forehead, wearing desert camouflage uniform and a stole around his neck.

“I don't speak their language but love is an international language,” Pyo, who is originally from South Korea, said. “My spirit of love touches their human spirit.”

Iraqi translators sometimes help him communicate but they are not always available.

“I point to my Christian wear so they know I'm a Christian chaplain,” he said. “I ask them 'Would you like me to pray for you or your loved one or child?' They all say 'Yes, please pray'.”

A team of Iraqi doctors wrote in the British Medical Journal last month that more than half the civilians who die as a result of attacks in Iraq could have been saved if better medical equipment and more experienced staff were available.

The US military doctors say they'll treat anybody who shows up if the risk is to “life, limb or eyesight”. In practice, entering the hospital is impossible for most Iraqis since it is in the middle of the fortified Green Zone.

Those who make it are usually Iraqi security forces, children or other civilians wounded in bombings and evacuated by U.S. forces or Iraqis working in the Green Zone.

During a 24-hour period this week, more than half the emergency patients were Iraqis. A 12-year-old girl named Iman with both legs amputated just below the knee after a mortar blast was returning for a check-up.

Rising US casualties have put US President George W. Bush under pressure over his Iraq policy before midterm elections next week.

More than 100 US combatants died in Iraq in October and 2,816 have died since the March 2003 invasion. Those numbers are dwarfed, however, by Iraqi casualties.

During the month of Ramadan, when violence surged, Iraqi security forces suffered at least 300 deaths, according to a senior US general. Hundreds of civilians are killed every week in insurgent attacks, sectarian violence and crime.

“We treat them all the same because we're the good guys,” hospital commander Colonel Erin Edgar said. The mood in the emergency room turns noticeably more sombre, however, when US casualties are brought in.

“Nothing compares to when you're having these kids come in (with) both legs are blown off, or they're hanging by a thread and you have to take a pair of scissors and cut the one string that's holding them together,” said Major Bill White, a 42-year -old nurse from Griffith, Indiana.

Lieutenant Abigayle Ross, a 26-year-old nurse from Seattle, said: “Your emotions are definitely more involved if it's a US soldier because we're all soldiers out here.”

Iraqis are stabilized and moved to local hospitals as soon as they can travel. US patients are shipped out to Germany and the United States as soon as possible.

White compared treating suspected insurgents to taking care of prisoners at a civilian hospital back home.—Reuters