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'People are going to die'
22/07/2003 12:13 - (SA)
Monrovia - A breast-feeding baby, his back sliced with shrapnel wounds cries out for milk. His mother lies listlessly next to him with nothing to offer.
Most of her chest has been blown off.
Hundreds of people flooded John F Kennedy Hospital on Monday during the bloodiest day of fighting in the Liberian capital in two months.
Some arrived in pick-up trucks and police cars. Others were hauled in in wheelbarrows. Crammed into corridors, the wounded lie on mattresses on the floor, screaming in pain.
"I don't know where we stand. I don't know how we are going to make it," said Mohammed Sheriff, the hospital's medical director. "Because we are short of manpower, people are going to definitely die."
The five-month-old baby cannot be consoled, although his 12-year-old aunt rocks him in her arms.
His father, 35-year-old police detective Parleh Chea, is frantic. His white T-shirt is soaked with blood from wounded relatives he pulled out of the family home after it was hit by mortar shells.
"When the rocket landed, the next thing I saw was the body of my brother-in-law lying in a pool of blood and my baby on the other side screaming in pain," Chea said.
His wife, clutching her chest, appeared too badly hurt to still be alive. "Her hands were so full of blood that I thought she had met her end," he said.
Nearby others lay with broken limbs and disfigured faces.
There were shortages of blood and supplies. The fighting has made it difficult for some of the hospital's staff to get to work.
The hospital treated at least 200 patients on Monday. Those who died were wrapped in green sheets and left in a hallway to be delivered to a morgue.
Some of the bodies had yet to be identified.
In the thick of Monday's fighting a mortar shell landed near the hospital. Medical staff frantically moved people from an outdoor triage centre indoors.
The once-prestigious hospital was already heavily damaged in the 1989-96 civil war.
"We really don't know how we are going to cope with the situation," Sheriff said. "All of a sudden we just started receiving, and receiving, and receiving."
- AFX
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