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03-Apr-2003

Eyewitness account from Yarmouk Hospital, Baghdad

by: Uzma Bashir

Bagdad: The Human Shield Action has received a resent report from Uzma Bashir in Baghdad.

Uzma Bashir and others visited the Yarmouk Hospital Tuesday morning,1 April. A woman, who had been wounded in the bombing of the Sha'ab district in North Baghdad, was lying in a ward weeping uncontrollably. “When I first saw her," Uzma said, "She looked up at me, and her tearful eyes told of a terrible story. She broke down in paroxysms of grief, her loud wailing bringing tears to our eyes. "There was not a dry eye among any of us as she told the horrible story of the bombing in which her three sons were killed." A missile hit the Sha'ab district yesterday morning, as people were going about their business. This is a civilian residential area with small shops and markets. Why was it bombed?

In another ward, an old man, also wounded in the bombing of the Sha'ab district, told me that all his ten children had been killed. A young boy of about 12 years lay in bed without any movement or expression, except complete bewilderment. He had lost his mother who had been killed by the blast.
Another man, blood oozing from his face as he lay on his hospital bed, told his story. He had travelled from Syria by bus, that is, by public transport. As he was nearing Baghdad, he saw three buses fired upon United States Air Force planes. An estimated 70 civilians were killed. A blind man was walking down the passage, helped by a friend. He was looking for someone who understood English. The man was clearly very angry. He pulled his shoes off and held them up saying:" This is George Bush! This is Tony Blair!" Throwing his shoes down on the floor in a rage, he stamped on them to show his contempt.
I saw a little boy about ten years old who was in so much pain he could barely stand. He had been wounded in the abdomen and in the crotch.
After we left the hospital, we went to a place about half a kilometre away, where we saw a bomb crater in the middle of five houses. The houses were clearly part of a residential area with a school at the end of the street. Eleven or twelve people were killed in their homes when the missile struck. One of the survivors of this bombing raid was also in the hospital in great physical and emotional pain.
Even though his leg was raised and bandaged up, blood seeped through the layers of bandages. He told us that his house had been destroyed and his family killed in the bombing.
I saw the place in the Sha'ab district where the missile hit; there was a deep crater in the main thoroughfare, which is divided highway with service roads along each side. On both sides of the road there was death and destruction.

A motor mechanic's shop had been hit. Walls had been blown apart; cars had been reduced to twisted wreckages. A radiator grill was bent as if some giant had taken to it with a mallet. Bits of burnt and torn tyres were scattered about. A piece of an exhaust pipe, bits of twisted metal and other debris were scattered where once there was a busy car repair shop.

Walls of residential buildings on both sides of the road were blown apart. On the other side of the road a woman was yelling something in Arabic about George Bush. Her rage boiled over as she burst into tears, still cursing him, and then embraced me sobbing on my shoulder.

Today we saw the 'teeth' of the grief and suffering imposed on civilian Iraqi people, on men, women and children.
The horror has just begun.

As the missiles keep flying, the innocent keep dying as if the attackers are bereft of all humanity.

Has 'democracy' gone mad? Or have the oil warlords taken over the
Whitehouse and Whitehall too? Only international civil disobedience and industrial action will stop this madness, before the mounting corpses come back to haunt us.

Source: Human Shield Action