By: E&P Staff It was only a matter of time before Anthony Shadid, who won a Pulitzer for The Washington Post earlier this year for his coverage from Baghdad, and who recently returned to Iraq after a long break, would tackle the question of civilian casualties. He did it Sunday with a lengthy report based at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad, revealing what one physician there called a ?day and night? parade of civilian victims.
Shadid also cited national figures on civilian casualties ranging from Iraq Body Count?s figure of about 15,000 (based strictly on media accounts) to the recent Lancet medical journal survey that estimated 100,000. The Iraqi Health Ministry, before it quit publicizing a number, had tallied 3,853 just between April and October this year.
A doctor at Yarmouk, one of Baghdad's largest hospitals, said he personally saw maybe 100 cases a day, twice as many as before the invasion in March 2003. Back then, he estimated, one in 1,000 was a victim of gunfire. Now half the cases are the consequence of the city's strife.
Shadid provided a kind of day-in-the-life chronicle.
"It's a ?museeba,?" Rubaie told Shadid, a disaster. He gestured to some of the equipment he uses and said, "It's all contaminated.?
Then Shadid wrote: ?He pointed to a tray splotched with iodine solution. On it was a jumble of scissors, gauze and gloves smeared with blood. Flies gathered on plastic bags, perched next to coils of suture thread and used IV tubes. A lone, portable radiator warmed the room. Drips of blood across the floor led to the rickety metal beds where patients were propped on thin mattresses sheathed in plastic.?
He also noted that a sentiment often voiced in Iraq is the idea of a people left without a choice: ?Some Iraqis remark that, before the war, they were trapped between an America they mistrusted and a leader they despised. During the war, their fate was out of their hands. Now, they often say they feel powerless as U.S. forces and the insurgents battle for an uncertain future.?
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