Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 19:34:17 +0100
From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl>
Subject: [fyi] incredible levels


RED CROSS HORRIFIED BY NUMBERS OF DEAD CIVILIANS

CTV - Friday 4 April 2003 - OTTAWA:    Red Cross doctors who visited
southern Iraq this week saw "incredible" levels of civilian casualties
including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said
Thursday from Baghdad.

Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi
capital, said doctors were horrified by the casualties they found in the
hospital in Hilla, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad.

"There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious
wounds in the region of Hilla," Huguenin said in a interview by satellite
telephone.

"We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead
bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very
difficult to believe this was happening."

Huguenin said the dead and injured in Hilla came from the village of
Nasiriyah, where there has been heavy fighting between American troops and
Iraqi soldiers, and appeared to be the result of "bombs, projectiles."

"At this stage we cannot comment on the nature of what happened exactly at
that place . . . but it was definitely a different pattern from what we had
seen in Basra or Baghdad.

"There will be investigations I am sure."

Baghdad and Basra are coping relatively well with the flow of wounded, said
Huguenin, estimating that Baghdad hospitals have been getting about 100
wounded a day.

Most of the wounded in the two large cities have suffered superficial
shrapnel wounds, with only about 15 per cent requiring internal surgery, he
said.

But the pattern in Hilla was completely different.

"In the case of Hilla, everybody had very serious wounds and many, many of
them small kids and women. We had small toddlers of two or three years of
age who had lost their legs, their arms. We have called this a horror."

At least 400 people were taken to the Hilla hospital over a period of two
days, he said -- far beyond its capacity.

"Doctors worked around the clock to do as much as they could. They just had
to manage, that was all."

The city is no longer accessible, he added.

Red Cross staff are also concerned about what may be happening in other
smaller centres south of Baghdad.

"We do not know what is going on in Najaf and Kabala. It has become
physically impossible for us to reach out to those cities because the major
road has become a zone of combat."

The Red Cross was able to claim one significant success this week: it
played a key role in re-establishing water supplies at Basra.

Power for a water-pumping station had been accidentally knocked out in the
attack on the city, leaving about a million people without water. Iraqi
technicians couldn't reach the station to repair it because it was under
coalition control.

The Red Cross was able to negotiate safe passage for a group of Iraqi
engineers who crossed the fire line and made repairs. Basra now has 90 per
cent of its normal water supply, said Huguenin.

Huguenin, a Swiss, is one of six international Red Cross workers still in
Baghdad. The team includes two Canadians, Vatche Arslanian of Oromocto,
N.B., and Kassandra Vartell of Calgary.

The Red Cross expects the humanitarian crisis in Iraq to grow and is
calling for donations to help cope.





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