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[casi] reports Belgian medical team, from Baghdad




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Dear list,

here are two more reports from the 2 Belgian doctors who are still in baghdad. Tomorrow, saturday, 
Medical Aid for the Third World, in cooperation with SOS Iraq, will send 2 more medical doctors to 
Baghdad to reinforce their medical team. We think it is very important that impartial reports of 
"non-embedded" sources keep reminding us about the horrors of this war. This war is particularly 
"dirty", and many innocent civilians die. And the lies keep coming. Remember that independent 
journalist are being harrassed, locked up, tortured and even killed by "friendly fire". A Belgian 
TV-journalist, who is in the south of Iraq, has described the hostilities of British troups against 
him yesterday in the 8 o'clock news. Disgraceful.
Now the US/UK-aggressors are using new types of bombs and ammunition. Can anyone tell me more about 
this type of bombs, which Geert describes in the first report? It has something to do with liquid 
copper or something. Horrible. Why doesn't the BBC report about this? Surely they must have access 
to these places, have knowledge about these incidents, because these regions are under US/UK 
control, they say. To me and others all around the world, the BBC has lost all its credibility. 
They can't be trusted anymore. They have proven to be a part of the US/UK war-machine. Masks have 
fallen. Shame on them.
Greetings.
Dirk Adriaensens.
www.irak.be
http://www.irak.be/ned/missies/medicalMissionColetteGeert/two_belgian_doctors_in_baghdad.htm
About the horrors of war, 100 km south of Baghdad

Bert de Belder  april 4 2003

"I have two awful stories to tell", Geert immediately starts when I get him on the line. "Today we 
drove to Hilla, a small town near Babylon that was heavily bombed yesterday. One poor district was 
hit by 20 to 25 bombs. The hospital of Hilla received in the next half an hour 150 seriously 
injured patients. Dr. Mahmoud Al-Mukhtar said that the wounds were caused by clusterbombs. These 
are bombs that explode into many small bombs that again explode individually and cause enormous 
damage. Clusterbombs are banned by the International Laws on War, but Bush completely disregards 
these! In the hospital I have seen very many abrading situations. A family of eleven persons, of 
whom six are dead. A father who is left with one child; his wife and two sons are dead. Small 
children with amputated limbs."

"My second story is even more horrible", warns Geert. "About a bus with civilians that was fired 
upon. Not the one in Najaf, which reached the news everywhere, but a case that according to me has 
not yet been covered by western media. Three days ago, In Al Sqifal, near Hilla, a passenger bus 
was fired upon from an American checkpoint, with ghastly results. According to witnesses the bus 
stopped on time and had, on orders of the American Military, turned back. Dr. Saad El-Fadoui, a 52 
years old surgeon who still has studied in Scotland, was immediately on the place of incident from 
the hospital in Hilla. When he told me what he had seen there, he again became very emotional, 
three days after it had happened. 'The bodies were al carbonized, terribly mutilated, torn into 
pieces, he sighs. 'In and around the bus I saw dismembered heads, brains and intestines,..' One 
wonders what a criminal weapon of massdestruction could have caused these horrors. Nobody had heard 
the sound of an explosion; on the bodies no traces of shrapnel were found. A journalist spoke of a 
heat-weapon with liquid cupper or something like that.. Can the Americans be really that cruel? Dr. 
Saad El-Fadoui asked us repeatedly to do everything to help stop this horrible war of aggression.

Geert understands me poorly when I say something, the line is not always clear. "We are momentarily 
without electricity", he explains. "Large blocks in Baghdad are without electricity, last night the 
bombardment was very severe. Colette (Geert's college-doctor Dr. Collete Moulaert) saw from her 
hotel room, just behind the mosque in this neighborhood, two enormous fireballs coming down. I 
think that these are containerbombs of about 7-8 tons each that cause enormous vibrations. "I am 
shivering of the cold", Collete said, but this was the vibration caused by the bomb explosion.

"You should not belief everything what CNN and BBC are showing, Geert informs us. "That we were 
able to travel today up to Hilla (near Babylon, south of Kerbala) with a large group 'human 
shields', 100 km south-west of Baghdad, proves convincingly that the Iraqi capital is not being 
completely surrounded and besieged. Along the way we hardly saw Iraqi troop movements. On the 100 
km route we didn't pass any Iraqi checkpoint, and hardly saw signs of war. There were groups of 
scattered houses, trees, even children playing with paper kites.. One time we were told to take a 
side road because a colon of 20 to 30 Iraqi tanks had to pass. This again disproves the charges 
that the Iraqi army is using civilians as shield for military operations: our civilian vehicle was 
first sent safely to another road before the Iraqi army passed. On our way back the Americans and 
British were bombing the area. For our safety we had to take a new another road, but this was also 
nearly hit by a bomb, followed by a tick plume of smoke. This was frightening for a while, because 
we were not safely in our hotel, but in the open air.



"Today in one civilian hospital: 2 dead and 30 injured"

april 2 2003

"From this morning until late this afternoon, Dr. Colette Moulaert and me were at the Al-Yarmouk 
hospital. Some thirty injured were brought to the hospital. Apparently, a bomb had struck in the 
vicinity. I was at the emergency ward where I saw 2 dead and several injured patients because of 
shrapnels.

The hospital staff already knows us. While other westerners, mostly journalists, are given a short 
tour, we can freely accompany the doctors. An orthopedic surgeon called me in his consultation room 
and asked me advice on some of his patients. We exchanged experiences with pain management. It made 
a welcome change for the psycho-social support we usually give.

When you get to know the hospital from the inside, you notice the shortages: some pain relievers 
and antibiotics for example. But at a press conference I heard vice-president Ramadan reiterate 
that Iraq doesn't need humanitarian assistance. What is needed is the end of the US aggression and 
the sanctions, and the unfreezing of Iraqi bank accounts. Iraq is too proud to beg for humanitarian 
aid and understandably so.

But the Iraqi health authorities welcome the assistance of organizations--like Medical Aid for the 
Third World--that work in the first place for the removal of the root causes of the Iraqi people's 
suffering, the armed aggression of the US and the UK, and that show their solidarity with the Iraqi 
people.

Do you want to hear another anecdote about the weapons inspections? Today we also dropped in at the 
El-Mustansiriya University. It has been under fire for five days although it had been searched 
thoroughly by the weapons inspectors who proclaimed it free of weapons. And still it was a target 
for the US! Are you surprised that the people here say the weapons inspections only served to 
identify targets for the bombings?"

Support the work of Geert and Colette in Baghdad: Bank account number 001-1951388-18 of Medical Aid 
for the Third World with reference "Iraq mission."





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