Baghdad's Sadr City mourns its dead and injured

[babylonsister]

Baghdad's Sadr City mourns its dead and injured
By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2008


BAGHDAD — In Baghdad's Shiite Muslim slum of Sadr City, U.S. airstrikes aimed at militants plague the population.

After a week of violence between the U.S.-backed Iraqi Security Forces and the militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr, the American military is targeting mortar teams and rockets that have bombarded the heavily fortified Green Zone, home to U.S. and Iraqi government headquarters.

Inside the Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City on Tuesday, Haider Jassim, 4, pointed to his belly and told his mother "oowa." An American child would say "boo-boo." His abdomen was wrapped in bandages after doctors cut him open to remove shrapnel lodged in his colon.

Last week he was playing in his home as his mother slept nearby with her 4-day-old baby. Now she spends night and day in the hospital with Haider.

He can't eat, and he urinates into a tube.

"I just want safety for my baby," Saleema Dwaich said. Her son wept in pain; she wept in response.

"When we got rid of Saddam, things were supposed to get better," said her brother-in-law Sabah Kokas Jassim.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/32348.html