| Baghdad suffering lawless powerless Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-04-11-tragic-city_x.htmhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-04-11-tragic-city_x.htm
Baghdad suffering endures amid war's fate BAGHDAD (AP) — Volunteers buried 17 decomposing bodies wrapped in bloodstained blankets Friday in a mass grave in the yard of an abandoned hospital. A man, hit by a car as he ran from gunfire, lay dying next to the grave, flies crawling over his bloodied body.
Despite images earlier this week of jubilation in Baghdad's streets, lawlessness and lingering pockets of resistance to American forces are prolonging the city's suffering — even as the war seems to be drawing to a close.
Hundreds of Baghdad residents have been killed and thousands injured since the campaign began. The city of 5 million has been without power for more than a week. Though running water is still available in most areas, the supply is irregular. Telephone lines have been down for two weeks since coalition forces struck the city's exchanges.
Al-Yarmouk Hospital has been empty of most staff since it was struck by a missile and tank fire on Monday that sent hospital workers fleeing for their lives. One young doctor and three male nurses were the only staff there Friday.
The emergency generator that had provided the hospital's power no longer works and the bodies in its morgue are decomposing. Hallways and wards that only a week ago were filled with the cries of the wounded and dying are quiet.
What is left are darkened hallways, empty rooms, bloodstained floors, broken glass and a gaping hole in the wall of the pediatrics ward.
In the deserted emergency ward, Mohammed Suleiman hysterically looked for his 8-month-old daughter, Rowand, brought in after a bomb her brother unwittingly brought home exploded.
"Please look at her face and see how beautiful she is," he screamed when he found the baby's lifeless body, covered with a blanket, her eyes half open, her nose and mouth bloodied.
"Why? Why?" he shrieked, collapsing against a wall.
Outside, the call for Friday prayers rang out as a dozen volunteers removed bodies from the morgue on trollies and buried them in a mass grave. Flies swarmed the gray blankets they were wrapped in; the stench was so overwhelming some volunteers wore surgical or gas masks.
None of the bodies had been ritually washed, as is customary in the Muslim faith. Still, the volunteers intoned the Muslim prayer in unison: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet."
"We had to do this," said one volunteer, dentist Yasser Wajeeh, as he shoveled dirt onto the bodies. "Yesterday, we buried 20 at a nearby mosque."
He said the dead included victims of coalition bombing, civilians caught in fighting between U.S. forces and Iraqi troops, and Arab volunteers who came to Iraq to participate in jihad, or holy struggle, against the Americans.
Suddenly, a burst of gunfire rang out, followed by what sounded like a tank shell. A few minutes later, the volunteers brought in an unconscious man, bleeding from the mouth and nose.
"Amu, Amu, can you hear me?" one man shouted, using the Arabic word for "uncle."
"Please say 'There is no God but God and Muhammad is his Prophet,'" he screamed into the wounded man's ear.
There was no response, just heavy breathing. "Nod if you hear me, please."
Someone suggested the man keep talking to the wounded man until a doctor could come. "What do you want me to do? The Americans come and kill us, and now you want me to save him?" the volunteer protested.
In the hospital emergency room, meanwhile, Suleiman, 47, recalled the explosion that killed his baby daughter.
He said his eldest son Seif brought home a device that exploded when he tried to examine it.
Rowand, the youngest of his five children, was killed and his wife, Wafa'a Abdel-Fatah, was wounded in her left arm and leg. A nephew was wounded in the shoulder.
Suleiman said he was convinced the explosive was an American cluster bomb and his grief soon turned into anger.
"I'll kill an American one day. Perhaps not today, but maybe after 10 years," he said.
Then Suleiman, his wife and nephew were helped to a car so they could be taken to the still-operational el-Iskan Hospital.
Rowand was left behind in the emergency ward, her body lying on the floor, covered with a gray blanket.
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