By CHAD GARLAND | STARS AND STRIPES
Published: December 8, 2016
IRBIL, Iraq — Three gurneys were crammed into the middle of a small ward of the West Irbil Emergency Hospital already crowded with patients, just some of the casualties from the seven-week-old campaign to retake Mosul overwhelming hospitals in the region.
Hospital staff prepared to defibrillate a woman with pale, clammy skin on one gurney while a man comforted a sobbing woman whose arm was bandaged tightly to her side on another. On a bed in the corner, a two-month old boy wailed into a respirator nearly as big as his face while nurses tried to comfort him.
Many of the patients had come from nearly 50 miles away, where Iraqi forces were battling to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group. Both soldiers and civilians are suffering heavy casualties amid escalating combat as the Iraqi forces advance toward the more densely populated areas of the city.
At the West Irbil Emergency Hospital, which has received more than a dozen new patients daily from the front, there is constant demand for its 13 operating rooms...
