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

[leftchick]

1. more. Aren't you proud of the USA?!?

:puke:

<snip>

Upstairs, Sabah Raheem's family sat on the bed next to his. The skin on his face was black from the burning shrapnel of a U.S. airstrike. On his chest were black craters where metal pieces had gouged his flesh. His left eye was gone, along with one of his legs. Around him were four other men with missing limbs.

His parents were at home, mourning his two brothers, both killed in an airstrike.

"We haven't told him about his brothers yet," said his uncle, Saad Naathoul, 39. "He's just came out of the coma."

Raheem's chest heaved and his eyelids fluttered. Earlier that day his 8-month-old daughter came with his wife to see him. She cried in fright at his blackened skin and missing leg. A large piece of shrapnel wedged in his stomach couldn't be removed; bandages covered the area.

"A missile hit the house," Naathoul said. "It's a family of six, and last year they lost one in a car accident. Now two are gone and then him. The situation speaks for itself."

He waved toward Raheem's bed.

"They said there was a very small chance he would live," Naathoul said. "But by the grace of God he is getting better."

Nearby, 16-year-old Karrar Ali Hussein's chest also heaved, because a bullet pierced his side and remained inside him. He was playing soccer, his father said, when a U.S. sniper shot him.

[babylonsister]

2. Not even. :cry: nt

[annabanana]

3. McClatchy truthteller. . . . . .n/t

[NC_Nurse]

4. Winning more hearts and minds, I see.

So tragic and pointless. :cry: