GENEVA/BAGHDAD, 12 April 2003 — The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said yesterday that Baghdad’s medical system had all but collapsed because of combat damage, looting and fear of anarchy. It said that hardly any medical or hospital support staff were reporting for work and that patients had either fled or been left without care. “The medical system in Baghdad has virtually collapsed,” the Geneva-based humanitarian group said in a statement.

Earlier, spokeswoman Nada Doumani had told Reuters that the ICRC doubted that any hospitals were still working in the capital because of the anarchy reigning on the streets. “The ICRC is profoundly alarmed by the chaos currently prevailing in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq. Lawless persons, sometimes armed, have been ransacking and looting even essential public facilities such as hospitals,” it said.

The ICRC called on US-led coalition forces, which control most of the capital, rapidly to restore order saying that it was their duty under the Geneva Conventions setting out the rules of war. “In areas under their control, the coalition forces have specific responsibilities as occupying powers under international humanitarian law,” the ICRC said.

Doumani quoted ICRC official Roland Huguenin-Benjamin in the Iraqi capital as saying that ...”probably there are no more hospitals functioning because of looting, lack of medical personnel; people are scared.”

“It is anarchy,” she quoted him as saying. Reuters correspondents in Baghdad said looting continued two days after US forces swept into the center of the capital, ending President Saddam Hussein’s rule.

An ICRC team ventured out on to the streets but had not been able to visit all the city’s hospitals yesterday, Doumani said. However, they did go to the 650-bed Medical City where they found very few people. “Operating theaters are no longer functioning. There are no more instruments in any case,” Doumani said.

On Thursday, the Swiss-based agency had reported that the Al-Kindi hospital in central Baghdad was attacked by armed looters who had stripped it of everything, including beds, electrical fittings and medical equipment. Doumani said that Al-Kindi was empty yesterday. She said that there were risks of epidemics because the city was also without clean water and electricity.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday it appeared there was no functioning government in Iraq and that establishing law and order must be a top concern for the US-led forces in the country. The ICRC is one of the only aid groups to have deployed expatriates in Iraq throughout the three-week conflict.

Looters also appear to have damaged a pipeline from a vital water station supplying the southern city of Basra — recently repaired after days of work by the ICRC — according to Doumani. Water supplies in Basra have been disrupted, she added, expressing renewed concern about the 1.5 million residents in the city, which is under control of British forces.

“They (looters) are attacking even basic public services. Our delegates spoke to the director of one hospital in Basra who said they had managed to succeed in defending the premises, but we don’t know about the others,” she added.

Other aid workers also said yesterday that hospitals were in “catastrophic” condition, with the remaining few doctors carrying arms due to looting and near anarchy in Baghdad in the power vacuum left by Saddam Hussein’s ouster.

With assault-rifles on their shoulders, doctors in white overshirts were treating patients at the emergency room of the Saddam Hospital for Children (SHC) in the Mansur central neighborhood.

Ambulances are seen roaming the streets, driven by excited youths puffing on cigarettes. At the SHC emergency room, there is a shortage of doctors who did not flee due to the massive US strikes on the capital since March 20 and the widespread banditry that erupted with the entry of US forces into Baghdad on Wednesday.

Children were being buried in the backyard of the hospital due to the lack of space, electricity and security in the morgue. “Out of the 32 hospitals in Baghdad, only three are currently operating, and not in a normal manner,” Pascal Jansen, a coordinator from the International Committee of the Red Cross, told AFP.

“The hospitals are suffering severe shortages of water, power and fuel. They do not have doctors or staff. They can only last in this situation for the next three or four days,” he said.